My letter to the New York Times

Let us contemplate for a moment the size of the universe. And to be clear I’m not just talking about how many planets there are, or how many stars, but how much space. How much time. I’m talking about the size of reality. They are one and the same.

     There are really only two possibilities. Either the universe is finite, it has limits, it is measurable. Or it stretches on infinitely, immeasurable. Some argue the universe started at one pinpoint in time and space and a “big bang” sent it expanding, creating, defying entropy but only within its limits. Or the universe is bigger than that, the bang was just one event in a pre-existing tapestry of realities.

     Which do you think is true? Infinite or finite?

     This one fact has far-reaching ramifications. If the universe is finite, then it’s measurable. Then a large enough computer could theoretically pinpoint the outcome of every moment by measuring the actions of every atom in play, where it started and where it was inevitably going by the laws of physics. Under this construct, free will is an illusion.

     Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. You, being built of the stuff emitted from the big bang, can only do what you are already programmed to do. Your decisions were made for you the moment that time began because the things you interact with, the molecules of your brain, your car, your house, your lineage, the things surrounding you right now are made of atoms that were belched out of that big bang and have been propelled through billions of years by actions and reactions beholden to gravity, friction and thermodynamics. A slave to science.

     Your sentience, to be poetic, is a cruel joke. The moment you will die is unavoidable because it’s merely a scientific fact like the half-life of a uranium molecule. You are a spreadsheet statistic, an infinitesimal gear in a massive clock that runs, unalterable and unthinking, all by itself.

     Or.

     The alternative, of course, is that the universe is infinite. That in addition to the things in the observable world there are other factors at play. Some theorize there are other dimensions –- perhaps heavens and hells -- at countless angles and interacting with ours. Something, it could be argued, predicated the big bang. Under this construct, reality stretches on and folds into itself infinitely. Measuring matter is a fool’s errand, because it cannot be contained and perhaps can even be created – or destroyed. It is a universe of infinite variables.

     Under this construct, free will becomes a possibility because matter operates independently of physics. All things are free-wheeling through the universe, beholden to nothing because they have no creator. No computer, or god, could know the moment you will die.

     But the stakes of this fact are higher than that. Because if the universe is infinite, it is inherently chaotic. Science now is the illusion, because no act can be pre-determined based on the variable behind it because the variables are immeasurable.

     Math, physics, these become not cosmic truths but human inventions super-imposed upon the universe. They appear to work because they cleave out a set of variables and make predictions based on them, they are controlled experiments that shed no light on the way the universe actually works. Outside a laboratory, on the level that really matters, all things swim in a sea of chaos.

     We see patterns because we want to, they make us feel safe. There really are no shapes in the clouds, there really is no face in that plume of smoke. We limit what we believe to be possible because if the possibilities were limitless they would overwhelm us. In every moment we choose the world we see, and if we truly believed something to be true, it would be. Others may not see it that way, because they choose their own realities as well. Human nature is to not believe in miracles, even though they’ve happened before.

But wait, you say, physics work. The trajectory of a baseball can be determined by how it hits a bat, same with a mortar shell based on how it leaves the cannon. And absent other variables that would be true. But where that baseball lands depends on the athletic ability of the outfielders, and the wind, bugs, birds, the location of the sun, on and on infinitely. Whether that mortar hits its target depends on the same things, and whether that target moves.

     Does every object that rises fall? Look at the stars. Does every action have an equal and opposite reaction? Tell someone you love them, and see if the outcome is equal to the breath of uttering three words.

     So which is true? Is the universe finite or infinite. Do we have free will or are we ransom to fate?

     Either you have no choice in what you believe on this one fact, or the choice is yours to make.