It seems all parties lost from what I can see. Two dead and one facing life in prison.
MissCommunication stated: source post
It seems all parties lost from what I can see. Two dead and one facing life in prison.
In the opening scenario.....yes....and seems to be a repeating theme wherever desperation due to drugs or what have you commingle....takes many forms
MissCommunication stated: source post
Personally, I find comfort in the idea of fate. Like what happens is meant to be and there's a reason for it even if we will never understand it.
I dislike the idea of fate because it renders my personal decisions and actions meaningless (subjectively meaningless, I should say; they'll affect the world regardless). The thought of free will and that I actually have a say in what happens is much more comforting to me.
The way I see it is that if fate exists then I'm only an extension of fate and not myself, you know?
"I just need time to catch up to your train of thought because your perspective is so different from mine."
I had said:
"I don't believe things are "meant to happen," other than in the sense that they are inevitable consequences of all things interacting in tandem."
You responded:
"My point is that there was no tandem interaction in this case. These two elements had no reason to collide but for some reason they randomly did."
When you make a statement like that, you remove all variables involved in a situation. "Chaotic" is a description of some thing where there are so many variables at play, they become either extremely difficult to parse out, flat-out impossible to pick apart, or unable to account for.
What I am saying, is that every moment in the lives of each individual involved in the incident you described, led inevitably to that one moment.
You can say things are chaotic in the sense that you can't always predict all outcomes. Someone I knew for 10 years was shot in his apartment. You could say there was chaos in the sense that there is no possible way he could have anticipated he would die that night, but what I am saying is, everything in life led up to that. It was inevitable that he would choose to live in that apartment complex, and that the shooter selected that specific apartment for a particular reason. Go further back, and there are countless events that all led up to that one moment being the only possible moment there ever could have been.
Now it may seem like I'm hair-splitting a specific term (chaotic) here, but bear in mind...you had originally asked, "Is it fate or just random circumstance?" in regards to the event you described in your original post.
This is why I said:
"The universe, if it operates according to some order, does not act in accordance with what we expect of it with our limited understand[ing] of causality and how all things are interconnected."
That was a bit of a generalization; I should have said the universe does not always act in accordance with your understanding of causality and the interconnection of things. We are also capable of predicting events. But not approaching the extent that Laplace's demon could.
I argue that the occurrence you mentioned was indeed fate. Everything in the lives of the persons involved...all impressions made upon them by their environments, the environments with which they became intertwined with that shaped them (and who they would become), where they would go and what they would do consequentially, the conclusions they would formulate based on all of these factors...inevitably led them to that one point which became a news story.
To say as you did, "My point is that there was no tandem interaction in this case. These two elements had no reason to collide but for some reason they randomly did," is to negate that all of these persons had intricate lives which arrived at a singular point.
At this moment, that is the best way I can explain where I'm coming from on this.
Inquirer stated: source post
MissCommunication stated: source post
Personally, I find comfort in the idea of fate. Like what happens is meant to be and there's a reason for it even if we will never understand it.
I dislike the idea of fate because it renders my personal decisions and actions meaningless (subjectively meaningless, I should say; they'll affect the world regardless). The thought of free will and that I actually have a say in what happens is much more comforting to me.
The way I see it is that if fate exists then I'm only an extension of fate and not myself, you know?
Inquirer, I agree; this has always been my take on things as well, which is why I find this scenario so disturbing and partially why it stuck in my mind. It undermines the whole idea that your actions and decisions determine your fate. It was just a series of such random unconnected circumstances that led to a horrific end for these two elderly people. Ultimately it came down to just the wrong place and time.
The reason I find comfort in the idea of fate in this situation is it's difficult to accept that their murders just meant nothing. Idk, this scenario has caused some cognitive dissonance for me, as these shit stories usually do.
"I argue that the occurrence you mentioned was indeed fate. Everything in the lives of the persons involved...all impressions made upon them by their environments, the environments with which they became intertwined with that shaped them (and who they would become), where they would go and what they would do consequentially, the conclusions they would formulate based on all of these factors...inevitably led them to that one point which became a news story."
Your theory may be right but that means that everything is predetermined and then what's the point of anything? We're basically just pawns in some master game we can't influence. So many inconsequential decisions lead to that moment. It's not like when a person makes a lifetime of shit decisions and then faces a shit outcome, which is essentially a direct result of all the choices they made and the character they developed (who they would become). That scenario, fits my world view. But this story is the polar opposite of that....
I mean they stopped to get gas and buy cookies. This was caught on surveillance camera and was the last time they were seen alive. If they hadn't done that one thing maybe it would have put them on the road earlier and they never would have crossed paths with this guy.
Tbh, I think this bothers me because these people remind me of some of my older (and kinder) relatives and i see how vulnerable they are. I know I can't protect them from random things like this. It makes an already weak foundation seem shakier.
People often misappropriate the 2nd law of thermodynamics to adapt to the human concepts of "chaos" and "order". Beyond the dynamism of matter and energy within a closed system, this idea that happenings we perceive as chaotic are an extension of "entropy" is quite false. The "chaos" of entropy refers to thermal energy, not whether or not you die of old age or get shot in the woods.
As for whether What Happens is the only thing that could ever have happened, I'm not sure we'll ever know. I'm not partial to black-and-white explanations of enormously complicated concepts, and fate feels too conveniently human to adequately explain something so much bigger than the sentience of one species of ape on a tiny planet.
My gut feeling - for the little it's worth - is that there's an interplay between inevitability and countless modifiable variables. You can't choose your genetic profile, you only have so much influence over your environment and circumstances, but you do have some degree of control. Is it total free will? Perhaps not. But I'll take it :P