This blog post will explore the possibility of time travel and predicting the future from the perspective of scientific theories and human free will.
Most people have probably imagined traveling through time at least once in their childhood. They would ask themselves questions like, “I want to go back to the past and see dinosaurs in real life” or “How will people live in the future?” and indulge in the world of endless imagination. However, as we grow up, we shift our focus from these unrealistic fantasies to more realistic problems. But the concept of “future” still remains deep in our minds. Whether it is in the distant or near future, we are preparing for the present while being conscious of the time to come, and moving towards the future while dreaming of a better life. But what if the future we are running towards is already set and irreversible? In other words, what if the future is fixed like fate regardless of our choices and actions?
Since Newtonian mechanics, scientists have believed that the world moves according to certain laws. This belief has led to the idea that if we can learn the laws that explain all natural phenomena, we can predict future outcomes. For example, if a person releases a ball in their hand, the ball will naturally fall to the ground. We know that the Earth is subject to the law of gravity, which attracts balls, and that the force applied to an object accelerates it in that direction. Therefore, we can predict the movement of the ball. This principle is just a simple example, but the belief that the world moves according to various scientific laws and that if we understand those laws correctly, we can predict what will happen in the future has long dominated people.
Since the Industrial Revolution, science and technology have developed by leaps and bounds, and many scientists believed that they could predict the future through the laws of nature. Research has been actively conducted in various fields, including physics, chemistry, and biology, and various scientific principles have been discovered that can be applied to human life. Modern science is even attempting to scientifically understand emotions and behaviors by analyzing the actions of neurons in the human brain and the reactions of the nervous system. These studies eventually gave rise to the hope that even human emotions and behaviors could be predicted. In other words, human behavior is also determined by scientific laws. This belief that “the future can be understood through scientific laws” dominated the thinking of scientists and the public until the early 20th century, reinforcing a deterministic worldview.
However, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, published in 1927, brought about a major change in this deterministic worldview. The uncertainty principle revealed that all objects do not move perfectly according to the laws of science, but have immeasurable errors and uncertainties. This means that the position and momentum of all objects cannot be measured accurately at the same time, and the results can only be predicted with probability. This means that while we can still predict the future by applying the laws we know in local situations, the more time passes or the wider the scope of the prediction, the greater the uncertainty, making it impossible to predict the exact future. This has led to a maze of predictions about the future. The conclusion is that we cannot know the future accurately unless science overcomes the limits of uncertainty.
Where does the human desire to predict the future come from? The reason is that our lives are closely connected to the future. Everyone has hopes and fears about the future, and the uncertainty of the future has a great impact on our current choices. If we could know the future in advance, we could prepare for unexpected risks in advance and act strategically to change the future in the direction we want. However, ironically, this desire for vague predictions of the future often leads to anxiety and confusion.
The movie Minority Report interestingly deals with this dilemma of predicting the future. In the movie, Agatha (Samantha Morton) is a psychic with the ability to predict the future, and her ability is used by the police to prevent crimes in advance. The main character, John Anderton (Tom Cruise), learns of his future as a criminal through Agatha’s prediction and tries to avoid that fate. However, the incident he was trying to prevent eventually occurs, and in the final scene, Lamar Buzes (Max von Sydow) has the opportunity to change his destiny through his own choices, even with the knowledge of the future. This film presents a situation in which human free will is put to the test the moment they learn about the future, and delivers the message that it is not the future that is determined, but human thoughts and choices.
This story also raises an important question for us. Does our desire to know the future bring us happiness and peace? Or is it just a factor that amplifies unnecessary anxiety and stress? Knowing and preparing for what will happen in the future can sometimes be helpful, but the predicted future does not always turn out as expected. If what you wanted to know in advance turns out to be different from what you expected, the disappointment will be much greater. Rather than trying to know the uncertain future, it may be more peaceful for us to accept the future as something that comes to us anew every moment.
The fact that the future is uncertain gives us greater freedom. In a future that is constantly changing based on our own choices and efforts, rather than a predetermined future, it is important to live each day to the fullest. Isn’t true happiness a life filled with positive thoughts that tomorrow will bring good things, rather than worrying about bad things that might happen? Leaving aside the desire to predict the future and living in anticipation of tomorrow, which has yet to come, will make life more fulfilling.
