Knowable

Some people believe that the universe is intrinsically unknowable.

That is there will always be mysterious things happening around us that we won’t be able to explain. It’s a somewhat romantic perspective on the world.

Other people believe the universe operates by a series of nearly-strict formal rules, deep underneath.

This means that any and every behavior or event is explainable, it’s just that we either don’t have deep enough knowledge yet, or the frequency of occurrence is so tiny that we haven’t been able to imagine the event before it occurred.

From that view, It’s not that the universe is random, but rather that our encounters with it are probabilistic. Things that happen, that you didn’t expect to happen, only happen rarely. So any surprises are a lack of expectations, not some mysterious forces.

In that second perspective, if you view the world with objectivity, you can gradually build up a better sense of the types of things that can and will occur and in doing so that brings you a bit closer to understanding our surrounding reality. You become a realist, not hoping for the best, nor complaining about the worst. Just accepting things as they are.

If you see the universe that way, then all things of interest are on some trajectory. You can then make inferences about where they are going, but also understand that any sort of unusual collision may change their course. Then you can catalog any of the known possible collisions and their frequencies. Obviously, common collisions are part of your assumed trajectory, but less common ones deserve consideration too.

If you understand the allowable paths for any given trajectory, you can make arrangements to route through them to the desired result. That is, you proactively know where you are going, while reactively steering through the known and occasionally unexpected obstacles to get there.

It also makes it easier to understand what just happened. Look for some uncommon collision and reinterpret its frequency as needed. A bunch of trajectory shifts in unlikely places can interact to alter seemingly unrelated trajectories, the proverbial perfect storm.

A mysterious universe is more appealing to some people, but collectively we do seem to have already acquired enough knowledge to dispute it.

Our next great feat is to be able to leverage what we know, and will soon learn, to keep our own trajectory from spiraling down. We’ve mastered living in harsh climates but have not figured out how to prevent unintended side effects. We shape the world around us for our own convenience, but it is still destructive. If we can sort out these mistakes while picking better destinations, we can live up to our intellectual potential.