“Mathematics and prophecy: Kearney had known instantly that the two gestures were linked, but he couldn’t say how. Then, waiting for a train to King’s Cross the following morning, he identified a relationship between the flutter of cards falling in a quiet room and the flutter of changing destinations on the mechanical indicator boards at the railway station. This similarity rested, he was willing to admit, on a metaphor (for while a cast of the Tarot was – or seemed – random, the sequence of destinations was – or seemed – determined): but on the basis of it he decided to set out immediately on a series of journeys suggested by the fall of the cards. A few simple rules would determine the direction of each journey, but – in honour of the metaphor, perhaps – they would always be made by train.

He tried to explain this to Inge.

‘Events we describe as random often aren’t,’ he said, watching her hands shuffle and deal, shuffle and deal. ‘They’re only unpredictable.’ He was anxious she should understand the distinction.”

Light – M. John Harrison 2002

An entirely deterministic universe does not have to be a boring one. And even if we had to accept we were without free will, it wouldn’t mean our lives would be without surprises.

There is an anthropological twist to the concept of unpredictability. Just because we cannot predict the future, it doesn’t mean that the future is unknowable. It just means it is unknowable by us, at our present level of intelligence. If Moore’s Law were to eventually give us the processing power to accurately model our entire universe, the future wouldn’t be something we’d have to speculate upon, it would be something we could calculate.

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