‘Chance & Necessity’?

The new deal I made with AT&T for Net access has had unintended consequences. Part of it was I get a new iPad with unlimited mainstream TV access (with Showtime as a kicker). I fired the sucker up this morning for the local extended weather forecast but stumbled onto CNN, and before I could figure out what to ‘touch’ to get Wolf Blitzer (a spook-moniker if I ever heard one) out of my face, I found myself interested in the ‘reality programming’ they were blaring:

The congressional hearing to decide if this guy Kavanaugh is fit to be a Supreme Court Judge. Talk about ‘he said, she said’! Anyway, I’m in bear/cougar country, planning to spend the day woods-walking with Gus and writing an essay about cause and effect, which was to be titled ‘Chance & Necessity,’ but wound up doing neither.

It soon became evident that someone was lying. Now don’t laugh. I mean, I know: Politicians in D.C. were talking so of course someone was lying. Thing is, in this case an interesting conundrum presented itself. (I assume you know that Trump’s Supreme Court nod, Kavanaugh, is under fire based on the claim that 36 years ago, in high school, he sexually assaulted a 15 year-old girl.)

Kavanaugh’s total denial of the woman’s testimony was such that, if he’s lying, I was watching a full-blown psychopath in action (which is nothing new in my life). On the other hand, if the woman (plus three others who claim similar behavior on Kavanaugh’s part) is lying, I was then witnessing a full-blown black op in action. And Kavanaugh wasn’t shy in pointing this out. Hey, he even mentioned ‘revenge by the Clintons’  as an aspect of the op (he had been on Ken Starr’s impeachment committee)! It was surprising (and amusing) to hear a potential Supreme Court Judge spout what can only be defined as a ‘conspiracy theory.’

So ‘Chance & Necessity’ got put off. Until tomorrow, all goes well. Meanwhile, use Comments to weigh in on the day’s doings in our nation’s capital, especially if you witnessed a good bit of it and have a strong opinion. But let’s try to back off a bit from the Big Picture of HTWRW and pretend we’re just dealing with a simple case of who is lying, along with whatever obvious and immediate implications you sense.

By the way, I’m interested in What Happens Next in this matter for this reason: As I say, there are only two possible implications to today’s events at the hearing: Either we might very well have a (or another) full-blown psychopath on The Court or the Democrats committed all sorts of felonies to fuck up The Donald. Shouldn’t ‘they’ get to the ‘truth’ here? This itself is an interesting question, no?

Allan

A hint about ‘Chance & Necessity.’ In very general terms, there are two possible ‘natural causes’ to any given ‘physical event’ (I’m using scare quotes because an analysis depends on the strict definitions of these terms), one being chance, the other necessity.

Since ‘chance,’ by definition implies ‘random causation’ – and given that everything supposedly has a ‘cause’ – we already are on dilemma’s horn.

Necessity, on the other hand, implies a known ‘law of nature’ as the ‘cause.’

Take a coin flip. Heads or tails. Chance, right? With an honest coin, 50-50. But we also know that how the coin lands is governed by the laws of nature, good old Newtonian physics.

So is a coin toss ‘chance’ or ‘necessity’?

In any given cause-and-effect situation, is there a third choice? Yes, IMO, and a possible relevant term is ‘intelligent design.’ See what I mean?

This is a general hint of what I intended to write about today, and it has everything to do with the two books I’m examining, i.e., Dangerous and Who Built the Moon?

If you have something to say about this subject I’m likewise all ears.