All Encompassing Logic

Some people believe Everything Happens For A Reason, but other people are annoyed by this philosophy--  so if you'd like, you can buy a t-shirt with Everything Happens For No Reason emblazoned on it-- but logically, both these statements are identical . . . if everything happens for a reason, then nothing that happens has any greater reason than anything else . . . the fact that you spilled your coffee and the fact that thirty volcanoes erupt simultaneously on your birthday are both equivalent-- in fact, if everything happens for a reason, then everything is already determined and laid out in some sort of clockwork pattern and the universe is deterministic . . . and if everything happens for no reason, that doesn't mean that things are random and meaningless, because it's statistically impossible for every single thing to happen without reason, so it must mean that the universe was set rolling and now it's just proceeding like a column of dominoes, one event knocking into another in a chain reaction, without individual meaning . . . but possibly in some master pattern . . . so really the only interesting variant of these statements is Some Things Happen For A Reason, and Some Things Are Totally Random because that means there's something out there that can control things, and this thing occasionally takes an interest in the affairs of the universe and occasionally falls asleep at the wheel . . .

4 comments:

Lecky said...

glad to see you are wasting another summer off

Dave said...

you can only have profound thoughts like this when you don't have a job.

Whitney said...

Some Things Happen For A Reason, and Some Things Are Totally Random is too long for a good t-shirt.

Dave said...

and really it should read "some things may happen for a reason, and some things may not happen for a reason, or everything may happen for a reason, or nothing may happen for a reason . . . but what do i know?" which would require an xxxl shirt.

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