We Control Nothing, But Influence Everything

Or, the noise of one person’s life is the signal for another

I woke up with a weird thought today. I’ve often come across moments where my path crosses with someone in a seemingly random way. Like last week, I ran into an old colleague I hadn’t seen in years, right when I was thinking about him. (I wasn’t really interested in meeting him, but that’s another story.) Or that time at a coffeeshop, when I ran into someone from my hometown who worked there, and he gave me a discount. And then there was the time in 2022 when I was thinking of quitting my job, but they decided to layoff a couple of folks, so I got out with a sweet severance package.

I’ve always disregarded these moments as coincidence or luck. I’ve simply brushed them aside and shifted my focus back on things that I control — convinced that this is what impacts my future, not some random fluke.

Every TED Talk I watch and every self-help book I ignore, the recurring message is the same: “You alone hold the key to solving your problems.” This line of thinking is so commonplace that it’s uncontested.

This thought stayed with me all morning. By lunch time, I started to sense a problem. This whole thing might be a lie. In fact, this might be the collective delusion that defines our times.

“Our decisions define our path, which means we control our path.” People cling to this delusion like a child clings to a favourite toy. But every so often something happens that makes it clear how absurd it is to think of an individual as separate (or separable) from everyone, and everything.

I recently came across a story that gave some perspective. It unfolded in the summer of 2022 off the coast of Greece. Ivan, a tourist from North Macedonia, gets swept out to sea. The coast guard searches and searches but finds nothing. Ivan is presumed lost. Eighteen hours later, Ivan is miraculously found alive. He saw a floating ball in the sea and held on to it through the night.

It doesn’t end here.

A woman sees this news on TV. She cannot believe it! It turns out to be the very ball her boys had accidentally kicked into the sea ten days earlier. She didn’t think much of it and bought the kids a new ball. But without the accidental kick, Ivan would have been dead.

I don’t think twice about such stories. But not today. Today, I pondered. What if these seeming exceptions reveal some hidden truth about our hyperconnected lives? What if small actions and choices, made by people we may never meet, can profoundly influence our paths?

This got me thinking about Laplace’s (pet) demon.

Imagine a super-intelligent being that knows with absolute precision each and every detail about every single atom in the universe — from the molecular structure of each drop in the Pacific Ocean to the chemical makeup of every microbe in the deepest regions of the Amazon rainforest.

It understands why everything was happening. It also knows what would happen next. This being sees reality like a solved jigsaw puzzle across space and time. To this being, the concept of probability doesn’t exist.

The drifting ball that saved Ivan might have surprised us, but this being would know the ball was coming right at the moment it was kicked. Actually, it would have known the ball’s fate from the moment it was bought. No, it would have known what all would happen from the moment the boys, even Evan, were born. Wait, I think we can stretch further. If I were to interpret Laplace correctly, this being would have known everything right from the moment the universe was born. Big Bang!

But for the demon to predict everything precisely, its precision would have to be flawless. Even the tiniest diversion — like being off by just one atom — would throw its predictions way off over time and ensue chaos.

For example, if the demon is trying to predict the weather and rounds the windspeed from 3.506127 kilometres per hour to 3.506, this would grow over time and lead to completely wrong forecasts for entire regions.

That’s chaos theory in a nutshell.

It’s evening now, and I’m starting to realise that this basically shifts how I perceive the world and, by extension, everything around me. Since even teeny-tiny changes can cause huge effects, the universe often feels uncertain and random.

Not just that, chaos theory raises some unsettling questions about our lives too. If a tiny change in weather can bring an ice age, what about my choice to jump out of bed on a Tuesday instead of hitting snooze? Won’t it start a cascading chain of events that affects not only future me but also others?

The scene in Chris Nolan’s Oppenheimer that made the biggest impression on me was where they decide which cities to bomb. US Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson nonchalantly declares that Kyoto is off the list since he honeymooned there. The fate of millions was decided by one person’s choice of honeymoon destination.

Although it’s impossible to know in advance, but opting for a typography class in college might alter the trajectory of the universe down the line. It sounds absurd, but I think that’s how cause and effect work in a hyperconnected monolithic world such a ours.

On the bright side, on days when I feel like I’m just going through the motions, not doing anything remarkable, I can now reassure myself that I’m actively deciding the course of the world — not only my future, but also of those around me.

That’s how my evening went. By night I was convinced that there may not actually be any clear division between what’s “meaningful” and what’s “random.” What seems trivial to one person might be vital information for another. One person’s choice of delicacy one night might be COVID-19 for two years.

We control nothing, but influence everything. I think this only makes the world more interesting.