The one-sided Coin

Chance & Determination

The unknown man scoffed.

 "Human development was driven by chance and selection. God doesn't exist"

 "All right," I answered. "that puts HIM out of the way, since it is useless to talk about something that doesn't exist. So you - and I - are a product of chance rather than determination?"

The man nodded.

 "Well, then just by chance, you look very similar to those around you. And no random bone is sticking out of your head. Of course, 99.9% of you is predetermined; chance comes into it at the fuzzy edges, like the color of your eyes - sometimes. 99% of all humans don't have a choice even there. Not that you had any, by the way. And if more than the hypothetical 0.1% is a purely randomized mutation, you would not have been born alive."

The man started to protest. "Darwin... "

 "Ask any doctor, and he will tell you. But that is not even the issue here. Of course Darwin was right: man evolved within his surroundings. And that is never mentioned."

 "What is never mentioned?"

 "The setting. The reason you look like every other man, give or take a few random, but calculable personal traits, is that you were developed by a program that adapts to its surroundings. The one thing that really sets you apart from others, by the way, is your soul; your personality. But you threw that away right at the beginning of our conversation, so let's not talk about that."

I took a drink.

 "The program was forced to work with what it had. And, like I said, 99% or thereabouts of all truly random mutations are lethal, so don't fall below a certain unknown, but pre- determined number of offspring, if you want to evolve (and survive) - which does not mean your offspring won't die."

The man looked aghast.

 "But it goes much further than that. If you roll a dice, and roll it properly, any one of six numbers will come up, and after a while they will distribute themselves in a certain way with no preference. That's randomness in a nutshell. However, the number seven will not turn up - ever."

 "But... "

 "Neither will zero; you see, it's limited both ways. And that goes for six- sided cubes. However, there are dice with more - or less - sides, such as triangular, four- sided ones. These only turn up four random numbers, not six. Or take a two- sided dice - a coin. That will only render one of two. Heads, tails. Yes or no. You cannot in any sensible way chalk up a distribution curve for that one."

This time, he took a drink.

 "On the other hand, even the amount of numbers you could write on this planet is limited; large, but limited," I continued, and paused slightly.

 "Now imagine a one- sided coin, or a loaded one. One that can only turn up one answer, no matter how often you try. Theoretically, you could cut a spike out of a sphere that would not stand on its point, but roll onto its back every time; like a solid, three-dimensional idealization of a raindrop. Note also that the mechanical 'chance by dice' works only within the realms of gravity; a dice thrown in zero gravity and vacuum will rotate endlessly, and cannot decide your fate. That will become important."

I leaned back.

 "You see, there IS such a thing as a one- sided dice: and that is gravity. It is mono- polar. It does not have even two sides, like a magnet perhaps or an electrostatic charge, both of which will always null themselves out, like red and black on a roulette table. Gravity is one- sided: It leaves you no choice. And it drives you on."

He looked irritated; his friend had already stood up and left.

 "What has that got to do with me?" he asked.

 "Well, you evolved in a continuous gravitational surrounding, which left you no choice. Yes, there was a bit of friction here and there, which may have let your ancestry take this path or that, just as boulder in the path of a rivulet may change its course; but never its destiny: the lower lands. The sea. The gravity pit."

I took a sip.

 "So, you see, what you call a 'random development driven by chance and selected by its surroundings' IS HIGHLY PREDETERMINED from the start. Throwing out God, which you did, this leaves you with gravity: a blind physical force completely indifferent to its own results. God may have had mercy on you, at least on your soul, or so they say; but gravity does not. It does not even know you exist; and if it did, it would not care; one way or another, you are just one of its products: a rock or a boulder. What does it care?"

Again, he looked irritated. "Why do you keep on about gravity?" he asked.

 "Because gravity is the one, singular, mono- polar, one- sided, single- direction force that leaves the universe no choice; and you are part of it. Do you really think you had a choice? Or a chance? A chance for something else? Or your biological, your evolutionary ancestry did? Not one, not even a random one."

He was angry now. "I could have turned out to be completely different!"

 "No." I said. "What choice did you have? Given the surroundings as they are, or rather: as they were developed - by gravity, by the way? Something similar to you would have turned up sooner or later. Believe me, somewhere in universe, life is being spawned at this very moment; and somewhere else, finally terminated. But the planets on which this is happening had no choice, either. They came into existence just like ours did, and probably look the same, but none of them were asked."

I stood up.

 "Gravity is ubiquitous, it is eternal and all- powerful. And it knows but one direction, and one direction only. It uniforms the cosmos, and it produced you, and you had no choice. You had no chance. What are twelve billion of our own puny years? A pittance, perhaps, but a pittance with one chance only. It could have produced someone else along the way, but not something else. Not really."

He leaned back. I put on my jacket.

 "But perhaps I'm wrong," I said. "perhaps, somewhere along the line, maybe once at least, a two- sided coin arose to give you at least a 50% chance to turn into something else. But I doubt it. But maybe you can find it, if you think hard enough."

In parting, I turned. "Oh; on the other hand, it may turn out that the one entity that would have given you a chance or a choice, at least in retrospect, was the one which you threw away at the beginning. Good night."