Originally Posted by
Spamtek
Xnyper, I think you're pretty much on the money. I readily concede that determinism probably does reign absolutely so that a coin flip really can't end up any other way than the way it does (I suggested two possible outcomes each with their own personal universe not because I think that's the case, but to try and wrap indeterminists into my argument).
Here's a thought of mine: ultimately the entire universe can be said to be determined by a single random seed, something tied intimately to the big bang, or potentially the bang itself, that led to the rapidly-diversifying and complexifying conditions that have eventually resulted in us and everything around us. We have to ask, then, why is that random starting variable what it is, and not anything else? Parallel universes don't work when you try to fork a caused event into two different end-states in the here and now because determinism allows only one, ever, but back at the beginning of the universe - to me, I conceive of an infinite set of beginning-points (because it seems the start of all existence could only be one of a few things: either nothing, or everything), of initial causes, each essentially a random seed from which is born its own universe.
Thus while we can't say that for flipping a coin that this universe splits off into two parallels, I think it could be feasible to say that for flipping a coin in this universe, there's a parallel universe somewhere whose starting conditions were so similar to ours that it has mirrored ours in every conceivable way, up until that coin flip where the variables finally diverge significantly enough to effect a macroscopic change: heads, instead of tails in our world. This wouldn't be indeterminism, but would still allow about as close as I can figure to for at least seemingly different results for seemingly same actions (even though we're still stuck in this shoddy old universe, so we'd never know it).[/b]