So . . . I'm continuing with this week's theme of the role of luck and chance in our lives. Today's post is how chance affects major events and outcomes (and is a little longer than usual), and I'm not sure at this point that I have a specific answer to give on the topic (hey, the blog is called "What I Don't Know," so you should probably expect a lack of specific answers!). The event that I'm using as an example is the spate of riots, protests, and revolutions sweeping the Middle East and Northern Africa, but the concepts apply to any world event.
In case you haven't heard the story, the Tunisian protests were sparked by a single man. The facts (as you will see, the facts are sketchy at best), as reported in numerous news outlets (for example here) are as follows: Mohammad Bouazizi, a vegetable (and possibly fruit) vendor in Tunisia, was harrassed by Faida Hamdi, a municipal police officer. She confiscated his wares and/or cart (or, as I heard reported in one place, just his scale) for selling without a license (or just cuz). She (or someone else) apparently also slapped and/or spit on him. Whatever the facts leading up to it, the one thing that everyone agrees on is that following the incident Bouazizi lit himself on fire, which was videotaped, posted on Facebook, seen by millions, and led to the riots and subsequently governmental upheavals in multiple countries.
Let's look at it from a Desmond-Fatalist point of view (a strictly fatalist interpretation of the events would be if we believed that Bouazizi was always going to do this and that the consequences would always be the same; that sort of predestination is not only silly but tangential to my point), named after the Lost character who was told that the universe has a way of correcting itself, so even if you change minor events the major events remain the same (I'm sure this is an existing philosophical construct not based on a network TV show, but I don't know its name). If you believe in Desmond-Fatalism, then the fact that Bouazizi sparked this major changes is irrelevant; the change was on its way, and if self-immolation by a vegetable vendor didn't cause it, some other seeming small event would have. And there is a somewhat logical basis for this argument, because obviously there was anger towards the governments of these countries already in existence, and this event just provided the tipping point. That anger would have had to manifest itself somehow.
Though attractive, I can't fully buy this argument. I'd rather reside at the other extreme, which is the completely random viewpoint. If this particular man hadn't done what he did when he did it, the consequences could very well have been quite different. This is not to say that Bouazizi igniting himself was the only way that dictatorships would be overthrown (it just happens to be the way it occurred); but just as in Desmond-Fatalism there exists the possibility of multiple causes, in randomness there are infinite possible outcomes. For example, if there had been no incident with Bouazizi (let's say Hamdi was assigned to a different beat that day), the anger that was beneath the surface could have emerged via an organized rebel group, which may not have galvanized the Tunisian people the way the video did. They would be more easily repelled by government forces, which in turn would have made the government seem stronger and therefore discouraged further rebellion.
In other words, just because this was the cause (or appears to be) doesn't mean it's the only cause; just because this was the outcome, it doesn't mean it is the only one that could have happened. Chance intervened and provided the chain of events that actually occurred. The problem is that we tend to look at actual chains of events, see the logic in them, and therefore blind ourselves to other possibilities (those that did not occur this time). Kind of like our elitist view of evolution - humans currently rule the earth (compared with other species, though a strong case could be made for viruses and bacteria), and evolution led to humans, therefore humanity is the ultimate outcome of evolution and we are the most evolved speicies. This is just wrong. We could be a mistake, an aberration, or a sub-optimal evolutionary outcome.
To think otherwise is to go to the casino for the first time, win big, and conclude that this means you will always win big. Worse yet, "discover" a cause as to why you went to the casino or why you won big, and then rely on that lucky charm to ensure future winnings. Sometimes things happened in a particular way because they happened that way. If you like the outcome, be happy about it.
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