Knowing, Determinism, and Ball Four

I recently saw Knowing, a very entertaining if occasionally silly film starring Nicolas Cage. The film’s plot is bizarre. Somehow, a little girl living 50 years ago is able to predict every major disaster on the planet, leading up to a potential extinction event in the modern day. And, of course, it’s up to Nicolas Cage, finder of National Treasures, roller of Snake Eyes, and the lover of Carla (the prom queen), to save the world.

The central theme of the film is the issue of determinism – that is, the notion that everything in our lives, and in everyone else’s life, is essentially predetermined. You can call this fate, I suppose. This notion stands somewhat in opposition to free will, which is the idea that we “make our own destiny.” Of course, such a weighty topic deserves serious thought, and while the film doesn’t really offer a nuanced take on the issue, it does leave you thinking after you turn off the TV.

I got to thinking about what my view is on the issue. As you may know, I am someone who believes very much in probability and randomness, which might suggest that I fall on the side of free will over determinism (to create a somewhat oversimplified dichotomy). But in thinking about it a bit more, I’m not really sure where I lie.

As usual, my first thoughts on this topic were about sports. I thought about a professional baseball game. Surely, in advance of a game, one has a decent idea as to what the result will be. The rampaging Dodgers against the hopeless Nationals? Clayton Kershaw vs. Ross Detwiler? Yeah, I think I can predict that outcome pretty well. But no one on earth could possibly predict how every pitch in the game would unfold. Why is this? Well, because there are far too many things to consider in such a calculation. Practically speaking, it is absurd to think that you can predict the exact outcome of every single play in the game.

But, in theory, imagine that right before the game began, we could freeze time, and collect every conceivable piece of data that would affect the game: the condition of every cell in the players’ bodies, the thoughts in every players’ head, the weather at the moment of play and the expected weather later in the game, the effect of the breath and voice of every spectator, the bend of every blade of grass, the composition of the wood in every single bat, etc. In theory, all of this data would allow us to accurately model the outcome of the game, wouldn’t it?

If you are skeptical, think of this small example. It’s the bottom of the 9th inning of a tied game, and the bases are loaded with two outs. The tiring relief pitcher becomes erratic, and throws three balls to the batter (who is one of the opposing team’s weaker hitters), making the count 3-0. One more errant pitch and the game would be over.

Now, it’s hard to predict exactly what would happen on the next pitch, but I can give you a pretty accurate guess. The pitcher will throw a fastball, and the batter will not swing. Why? Any baseball fan will know why – a fastball is the easiest pitch to locate accurately, and the batter will be willing to take a strike right down the middle on the off chance that the erratic hurler will once again miss the mark, thus ending the game. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that the batter wouldn’t even take the bat off of his shoulder as the pitch sailed by.

So really, there are only two possible outcomes in this scenario: the pitcher will throw a fastball strike and the batter won’t swing, or the pitcher will throw a fastball that misses the plate and the game will be over. Of course, there are a very large number of ways that this could unfold, but we have narrowed it down a tremendous amount. And in this case, we didn’t need much information to narrow down the possibilities either. In theory, any other situation in the game is the same as this one, in that sufficient information would allow us to accurately predict the outcome. Of course, the amount of information needed in other cases would be far greater, but in theory the information is all there.

So this leads me to believe that determinism is not really antithetical to probabilistic thinking or randomness, as I had generally supposed. Perhaps my view, having now thought about the issue a bit more carefully, can be captured as follows.

When a pitcher gets the sign from a catcher to throw a curveball in the dirt, he registers this mentally, and begins his physical preparations. If you like, every cell in his body receives direction from his nervous system on how to proceed (I know, this is inaccurate biologically, but bear with me here). Then he begins his windup. Now freeze it, halfway through his delivery. Many of the cells, joints, muscles and nerves that were given instructions by his brain are responding as he hoped they would. But many are not. Why? I believe it is down to randomness, caused by unrecognizable fatigue, weather conditions, the friction from the uniform affecting the pitcher, etc. Most important among these reasons, however, is biological randomness. The human body is not a machine.

Does this mean that we cannot predict what happens to the pitch? That it could go anywhere, even backwards? Well, no; and I want to highlight two reasons why not. First, the randomness and variation occurs at such infinitely small levels that it does not actually affect the outcome in a dramatic way (he’s probably not going to throw it into the dugout, basically). Second, on aggregate, these random deviations might just cancel each other out.

Perhaps a machine can help me make my point here. Open Excel and type in “=RAND()” in a cell. You will get a random number between 0 and 1. Now highlight the cell and drag this command down to multiple cells. On the bottom right of your screen, you will see the cell average, count, and sum. And you’ll see that the further down you drag, the closer you get to an average of 0.5, the expected value of a uniform distribution between 0 and 1. In a way, a muscle in a pitchers body is like this – a collection of RAND commands, converging on the intended goal as ordered by the human nervous system.

So my thoughts have led me to a question, more than an answer. If we froze the earth now, and took every piece of data possible – every thought, every cell, every molecule – could we accurately predict the rest of human history? Or would the randomness inside everything, the standard deviation of every sinew, leave us hopeless in our desire to know how all things will end?