Imaculate Precision

As a school kid I was a dab hand at dabs. Here you call them jacks, in America I believe the game is known as knucklebones, or similar. I figured that it should be possible to predict the exact fall of the dabs provided you could accurately measure their weight plus the thrust of each throw, together with the speed and accuracy of your handturn.

I was reminded of this during a recent TV documentary about Albert Einstein's life. Now don't misunderstand me, I'm not for one second suggesting that Eintein was my equal, intelligence-wise. Apparently he wasted his last ten years working on the 'theory of everything' which seems to have some similarities to my dabs idea. The commentator used the example of dice, and how, if you could accurately record all the variables you could predict the fall of the dice.

Imagine a snooker game, or billiards. If you could accurately measure the weight of the ball, the precise point and angle of contact together with the thrust of the cue, as well as the friction between ball and table, you could then predict exactly where the ball would end up. And if it struck other balls on the way to its resting place you would also be able to accurately predict where each of them would end up.

It's quite simple when you look at it like that, isn't it. Now consider the same scenario with trillions of suns, planets, meteors and clouds of cosmic dust. Think back to the Big Bang, If you knew all the variables you would be able to predict where every sun, planet, meteor and cloud of cosmic dust would end up in the universe. What's more, you could carry on predicting trillions of years into the future.

If you knew the chemical make-up of every atom in the sun you would even be able to predict the exact moment when it will finally implode/explode, or whatever it is that suns do.

Of course I'm talking about a theory here, an impossible theory. I'm not saying that it will realistically be done or that it could be done. I'm saying, IF it were possible to accurately measure everything, including heat, time, weight, speed, gravity, density, rate of expansion and reduction, etc etc, then it would be possible to make accurate predictions.


If you haven't followed me so far there is no point you reading any further. You have reacted to my suggestion in a certain way based on everything your brain has experienced to date. You have either found it interesting or boring, easy to follow or difficult, brilliant or stupid, or anything in between based on the precise conditioning of your brain, together with the exact and precise number of brain cells you're left with after consuming copious quantities of Johnny Walker red, as well as their precise levels of electrical and chemical activity. Other things like distractions and stress also come into play, but although we can't measure it, everything has happened in a precise and accurate way.

If you move your hand from left to right, and I ask you to gauge the distance travelled, you would respond by saying "Probably about a metre or so." But the truth is your hand moved, for example, 98 centimetres, 14 millimetres and 27 thousands of a millimetre and 46 thousands of whatever that is. Everything happens with absolute precision, even if it doesn't seem like it.

Think of life as a frame by frame movie strip and you'll get it.

Imagine kicking a ball. There is a point in time when the ball reaches 12.95346793456 metres. We can't detect that moment of course, besides which there is no point to us doing so, but a super fast camera lens could accidently capture it, well, 12.953 maybe. And a super fast radar camera could capture its exact speed. I'm not talking here about police radar cameras which seem to have difficulty distinguishing between 50 kilometres an hour and the speed of light, I'm talking about precision equipment. Taking into account the weight of the ball, wind, humidity and other variables it would be possible to predict the exact spot where the ball would first strike dirt before bouncing off again to land in another predictable spot.

Reverting to the Einstein documentary for a moment, Einstein was frustrated by quantum mechanics, which is something I know nothing about. Einstein was trying to disprove quantum mechanics because it upset his 'theory of everything'. If quantum mechanics says that there are some things that can't accurately be measured, even so much or little as the speed or direction of one atom, or one particle of one atom, then my theory falls by the wayside too.

That's not quite what I mean because there are a lot of things we can't – at the moment – accurately measure, what I mean is, can't accurately be measured because it's reaction to a certain set of circumstances is random. For example, if you strike a cue ball full on centre, and it goes left instead of forwards, and if you repeat the process striking in exactly the same spot with exactly the same force, it shoots off to the right... if that's the case then read no further because I'm talking nonsense.

Everything has to be precise. We understand that millions of new cells are being formed in our bodies every day and millions of cells are dying. But each cell is an individual which has its precise moment of birth and it's precise moment of death. We would only notice this with a modern sophisticated microscope but the fact that we can observe its birth and death proves that what I'm saying is correct. And the exact moment of a cell's death could be accurately predicted if we knew its life-span potential, its health, environmental conditions etc etc. One hair's growth can be observed and measured. The more accurate the measurement the more accurate the predictions as to its future growth and its eventual demise.

When a baby is born its brain is pure. It may have some memories from the womb, noises, feelings of comfort or discomfort, but by and large we're describing a pure brain. We're still learning about genetic conditioning but if the brain is hard-wired to be gay, brilliant, mad, psychotic or whatever, the level of genetic conditioning is precisely based on hormones, genes, DNA, chromosomes, and all the other factors that go together to make the human brain.

Immediately the baby is born everything it experiences, lights, pain, sounds etc are recorded in the brain in precise degrees. It doesn't see some lights that are quite bright – although it may seem like that – in fact it sees twelve lights that burn between 150.14579 and 150.26832 watts. Everything is precise even though we don't know it. Sorry to keep harping on that point but if you don't get that then you won't understand a word I'm saying.

Then the parents start conditioning the baby's brain with precise amounts of love or cruelty, joy or misery, comfort or discomfort. Everything will be absorbed in precise amounts depending upon the precise condition of the brain. A child will accept or reject the concept that God is a merciful father who just happens to enjoy slaughtering children depending on the precise juxtaposition of braincells, chemicals, electricity, memories, trust and everything else. The child will believe or disbelieve things in exact proportion to the precise amount, degree and melding of all the brain variants, and he or she will react in a precise way to an exact degree according to those things.

This is why you can have two children raised in the same home given the same amount of love, one grows up to be a Salvation Army officer, the other grows up to be a serial killer. The truth is that no two people ever get the same upbringing, not even close. There are untold variables even though we can't see them. One word, misinterpreted, can cause one child to feel loved, the other to feel rejected.

We feel happy, sad, angry, inspired, dejected, rejected, accepted, suicidal... whatever... according to the precise power of the combined forces working on us at any given moment. Told that we're fat and ugly, everyone in the world will react in different ways, everything from indifference to anger to suicide. Our brain will react precisely to its hardwiring and everything we've experienced up to that moment.

Everything we feel or do is a reaction to a reaction to a reaction, going back thousands, even millions of years. The men who flew planes into the World Trade Centre did so because of something someone wrote almost 1,400 years ago and because of things they were taught by their parents and prophets and sheiks and Uncle Tom Mohammed an' all. Factor in emotions they experienced when learning of Muslims being mistreated, maybe the murder by a christian peacekeeper of a relative or close friend, and their actions become understandable and predictable. Though not forgivable, not in a million years.

Why not? Because that's precisely how my brain is wired.

The sun gives off a precise amount of heat which reaches planet Earth at a precise temperature, which alters at exact moments as the Earth spins on its own axis and rotates around the sun. The clouds form and reform with precision even though it looks to us as though they are just a nebulous mass of moisture with no discipline or predictable structure. But every single drop of moisture in a cloud is a precise size, weight and temperature, and is moving at a precise speed in an exact direction. And all these things will change in a precise way at an exact moment depending upon a precise number of variables.

Every plant will burst through the soil at a precise moment depending upon the age and health of the seed, its depth, the temperature of the air, the temperature and density of the soil, and dozens of other variables. If you knew all those variable in advance you could predict the exact split second when the first shoot would break through the soil.

And so it is with everything, if we knew all the variables and were able to measure them with accuracy we would be able to predict the future. That's the future of the universe and the future of life on Earth.

Chances are we'll never be able to do that because chances are we'll blow ourselves to smithereens within ten to fifteen years. Had someone known all the variables at the moment of the Big Bang, God for example, then IT would have been able to predict the precise moment when the first hydrogen bomb will burst over the first city.

Even if we do survive this century and even if we do survive a thousand years, it is most unlikely that we'll ever have computers powerful enough to accurately measure everything there is to be measured. But there again, who knows? Who would have predicted domestic electricity three hundred years ago? Who would have predicted computers a hundred years ago? Who would have predicted that we would increase the capacity of home computers from five megabytes to untold gigabytes in fifteen years?

Bear that in mind and ask yourself what kind of computers might we have a hundred years from now, or even a thousand years from now? If it becomes possible to accurately measure everything then we will be able to predict the future with absolute accuracy.

Which raises the question, if there is such a thing as a "God", an intelligent force behind everything, then did it already know the outcome of everything from the Big Bang onwards? If there is a possibility that humans may one day be able to measure everything accurately, then surely "God" can! So if everything was pre-ordained, what was the point of it all?

Please send your answers in a plain wrapper to Dopey Doug, P.O. Box 3005, Telopea, NSW 2117.

At the moment of the Big Bang, "God" knew that on December 3rd 2005 at 10.05.39.47.231am, a moron called Doug Kelly was going to start typing his preposterous Theory of Immaculate Precision. "Just for that," says God, "I'll give him haemorrhoids. That'll shut him up, smart-arsed bastard!"

Great Omniparient Doofus

posted by Zeitgeist @ 5:53 AM 0 comments