On Wed, 5 Apr 2000 20:55:00 -0000 "glenn morton" <mortongr@flash.net>
writes:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Burgeson" <burgy@compuserve.com>
>
> > So far -- OK. My difficulty is with the gasket math I suppose. I
> seems to
> > me that in at least SOME cases, extremely rare, I grant you,
> perhaps 1 in
> > 2**20000, the pattern you confidently assert "always" appears,
> would, in
> > fact, not appear.
>
> Not so, Burgy. The gasket always appears. There is absolutely no
> chance the
> gasket won't appear--none whatsoever.
> If you make a different set of rules, a different pattern is
> developed--only
> with a different set of rules.
>
First, Burgy, Glenn is right on the matter of Sierpinski's gasket. Note
that the point moves half the distance toward another point. Even if we
get a large number of moves in the same direction, the moving point can
only approach the fixed point. This is a consequence of the fact that the
sequence 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 . . . approaches 1 as a limit, but never
actually arrives.
There is, hoiwever, a more basic problem with the analogy, namely, that
the motion is determined by chance. Whether this is connected to a
pseudo-random or truly random number generator, it does not represent
personal choice. In contrast, let me note a report on one of the
runner-ups for the Darwin Award this year:
(August 1999, Australia) Drinking oneself to death need not be a long
lingering process. Allan, a 33-year-old computer technician, showed his
competitive spirit by dying of competitive spirits. A Sydney hotel bar
held a drinking competition, known as Feral Friday, with a 100-minute
time limit and a sliding point scale ranging from 1 point for beer to
8points
for hard liquor. Allan stood and cheered his winning total of 236,
(winners never quit!) which had also netted him the literally staggering
blood alcohol level of 0.353. After several trips to the usual temple of
overindulgence,the bathroom, Allan was helped back to his workplace to
sleep it off, acondition that became permanent. A forensic
pharmacologist
estimated that after downing 34 beers, 4 bourbons, and 17 shots of
tequila within 1 hour and 40 minutes, his blood alcohol level would have
been
0.41 to 0.43, but Allan had vomited several times after the drinking
stopped.
The cost paid by Allan was much higher than that of the hotel, which was
fined the equivalent of $13,100 US dollars for not intervening. It is
not
known whether Allan required any further embalming.
I note that drinking was Allan's choice, as was cheering his own success.
Sleeping afterward may not have been purely voluntary, for alcohol in
smaller quantities tends to produce sleep. Not waking up was not a matter
of Allan's choice, but of causality. Neither he nor his drinking mates
nor the hotel personnel intended the death, but it was out of their
hands. Similarly, whatever a person chooses to do (that is, what he is
free to do within the causal limits of his material existence), the
eternal consequences are out of his hands.
The problem most people have with God's foreknowledge may be applied here
in the question: Did God intend Allan's demise? If one considers the
deity as having to react (as in the silly infralapsarian-supralapsarian
controversy), then unconditional foreknowledge involves determination.
But, if the Creator is outside of space-time (_pace_, George M. The
Redeemer entered space-time, and Providence maintains it.), he may
observe and support human freedom without controlling it. This does not
exclude the ultimate consequences of human actions, which are as definite
as the laws of gravity or the fact that ethanol is less poisonous than
methanol or propanol. We exist now and in the future under God's rules.
The second problem is the silly notion that free will means that one can
do anything. But this requires that I not be free because I cannot flap
my arms and fly to the moon. Actually, all that is required for my
freedom is that my choice make a difference, however slight, however
tightly constrained. Note that, if someone holds a gun to my head and
tells me to do something, almost anything I do will be excused as done
under duress. But there is still the possibility that I tell the gunman,
"Go ahead and shoot, for I won't." I have that freedom, though I'd have
to be a very ornery cuss to exercise it under those circumstances.
Related to this second matter is the silly notion that all legal
enactments restrict freedom. My murdering you or taking your property is
proscribed. But, instead of being a restriction on me, it is a basis for
my freedom, for none of the many other citizens are free to kill me or
take my prpoperty, either of which would really restrict my opportunities
to choose. Though there may be some laws that restrict and harm rather
than benefit, the basic ones seem to advance the freedom of the
citizenry.
Dave
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