{"id":4953,"date":"2019-05-22T05:00:53","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T12:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4953"},"modified":"2019-05-20T12:13:44","modified_gmt":"2019-05-20T19:13:44","slug":"mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-iii-chapter-16-part-ii-chapter-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2019\/05\/mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-iii-chapter-16-part-ii-chapter-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;The Science of Discworld III&#8217;: Chapter 16, Part II \/ Chapter 17"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of <i>Darwin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Watch<\/i>, we talk determinism and Rincewind\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mistake. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>The Science of Discworld III<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>So, are our lives determined?<\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to answer that question being in my head and my head only. There are times when I <i>have<\/i> felt like some outside force is guiding me through life, but in hindsight, I was younger, and I was struggling with the concept of systemic ills. Why is it that I went through so many difficult things in my teenage years and my 20s? Was my life a determined set of events that I would <i>have<\/i> to go through in order to see if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d make it out the other side? That assumes a lot about who set up such things and how life can be determined if the outcomes of these events did nothing to affect the next major event. But it also falls into the mistake that this chapter addresses: Our lives do not occur in a straight line. (I mean, my life has never been straight AYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY). The case made by Cohen and Stewart is compelling, too, since it helped me appreciate the sheer complexity of human existence.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Yet even before we get to that point, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so much cool shit here. Like having it spelled out that there was not a single ancestor that we could trace our lineage back to. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another important detail I wish I had when I was younger because you hear it so much from anti-evolution people. WE DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T HAVE SINGLE ANCESTORS. We have a complex network of species that all <i>contributed<\/i> to what we would eventually become. Quote:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a single grandfather fish, or one grandfather primate, no thin line of descent, just as there isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a thin line of causality leading from a butterfly\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wing flap to a hurricane. Nearly any fish you went back and killed would make virtually no difference to history. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d still be here, but history would have taken a slightly different route to get to us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>BAD. ASS. And I love this phrase\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0153maze of tiny causalities\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbecause that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s <i>actually<\/i> what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unfolding at any given moment, right? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a single event followed by another single event, all with single, large causalities at work. Plus, HUMAN BRAINS ARE RIDICULOUS. Some days, I hate mine\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhy won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you ever just REST, please take a NAP\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut honestly, it can do some incredible things. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sort of the point. Humans are almost entirely unique in the ways we process information, on how we can make decisions based on imagined scenarios that are compiled of data from our experiences and things we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned, and we frequently use these composite imagined things to decide what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re gonna do about almost EVERYTHING.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>So: do we have free will?<\/p>\n<p>Is this all determined?<\/p>\n<p>Does it even matter?<\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fascinating philosophical issue, but I enjoyed the focus in chapter sixteen. The \u00e2\u20ac\u0153causal maze\u00e2\u20ac\u009d we live in is so deeply complicated that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d ever answer that question myself. If only \u00e2\u20ac\u0153large\u00e2\u20ac\u009d events are determined, does that mean I have free will between them? I think the clue is in the wizards\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 solution. Almost everything they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing is subtle and tiny, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s by design. They are affecting causality in a thousand tiny ways because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how it works. So, Darwin is still making choices, even if the universe is frequently changing around him, you know?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Except I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve said all this, and chapter seventeen went and delivered a HUGE plot twist. So, back in chapter 15, I wondered if writing instructions on a piece of paper was a bad idea, only because Pennysmart was about to be dropped into a very wet place. I did not think, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hey, maybe they shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take something from their world that could be <i>left behind<\/i>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>BECAUSE DARWIN JUST ACCIDENTALLY GOT RETRIEVED BY HEX. DARWIN IS GOING TO BE AT UNSEEN UNIVERSITY. Oh my god, my first thought is that the Auditors are going to flip out, right??? Secondly: RINCEWIND IS A GREAT PIRATE, I FULLY SUPPORT HIM AND HIS CATCHPRHASES. Third: Holy shit, the Auditors believe there are no rules in the Roundworld??? Well, no wonder they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re so keen on doing whatever the fuck they want, which included nearly wiping Rincewind out of existence. (Thank you, Luggage, for coming along!) So, if they have no problem invading Roundworld, are they going to just ignore the rules on the Disc?<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/j1gdQDj8SVE<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markoshiro.com\/blog\/2019\/5\/7\/the-anger-is-a-gift-trade-paperback-is-out-today\">The paperback edition of my debut, ANGER IS A GIFT, is now OUT!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of Darwin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Watch, we talk determinism and Rincewind\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mistake. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read The Science of Discworld III.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[463,248],"class_list":["post-4953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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