The Dice Never Lie?

In Behind the Screens 2008, John 2 wrote:

Ah, but you're forgetting that I would have gotten the exact same dice roll with the exact same results no matter what I was trying to do. If I was trying to go non corporeal and walk through the store window, I still would have rolled a 96 with brain burn. Unless YOU are lying, it would have happened the same way, no matter what.

I find this question perhaps the most fascinating of all the entirely theoretical questions I address about games and faith: are the dice random, or predestined, or something else?

I wrote a bit about this in Faith and Gaming: Mechanics, where I wrote:

But this in itself suggests another layer of concern: when does God control the roll of the dice, the lay of the cards? Is every roll determined by His will? Are all seemingly random events in our world truly random? It would seem to be much closer to the former than the latter; the more you focus on the question, the more difficult it is to imagine that anything ever happens in which God is not interested and involved. On the other hand, wouldn't knowing that He completely controls the outcome of our fortune-based games have serious implications for our play? Are we trivializing God's omnipotence by believing that He chooses the outcomes of our games? Are we minimizing his omnipresence by believing that He doesn't care about such things?

The answer to this may elude us until we meet Him face to face. But the problem itself is a glory. As Christians, we can accept that the dice probably do not fall at random; we can believe that the deck is stacked--not against us, nor in our favor, but quite specifically in God's favor. In the same way (although to a lesser degree) that we can believe that He has given us the leaders we need to run our country, and chosen the measure of our lives and the times and places of our births, and led us to our positions in life, we can believe as we sit down to a chance-based game that God has His hands on those dice and is working even this for His glory and our good. That doesn't mean that we're going to win (or that we're going to lose); it does mean that we will have the opportunity to show our faith during the game.

Thus I find myself wondering whether John's thoughts are correct.

Note that I am avoiding saying that I actually do think God controlled the dice in this situation such that John would botch, to chasten him for using his powers to peek under skirts. I only note that it is peculiarly appropriate that when John used his psionic powers to peek under the skirts of passing females he rolled a botch which proved to be rather painful. There are quite a few possible understandings of the alternate realities here; let me try to sort through them a bit.

• If John is right, he might have chosen to use his telekinesis for something less dubious, but would still have gotten the same roll. Certainly there are methods of randomizing in which the next "random" roll is fixed and even known--some games publish lists of random rolls in the back so the referee can use them in the order they appear. That is not the case here, as I am at the moment rolling real plastic dice; but it is certainly within the realm of possibility that the rolls would have been the same, given that I made them at the same time to check the use of the same skill.
• If I am right, had John performed the skill in some other context, the dice would have come up differently. This does not even require divine intervention to believe this. After all, when I saw John's statement that he wanted to lift skirts I had let's say a negative reaction--"here we go again". Had he instead used it to lift his duffel so he wouldn't have to carry it, I might have said, "that's creative". It means I've got a different attitude, and a different attitude expresses itself in different body language, and thus when I grab and throw the dice I am doing so from a slightly different posture and position--thus, a different number. Thus I can suggest without any theological basis at all that a change in John's intended action would probably result in a change in the rolls. What I cannot assert or explain by that is whether his botch is connected to his choice of skill, and whether he would not have botched, or would have botched differently, with a different use of the skill.
• Going in the other direction, John would have it that he is free to decide how to use the skill but the dice will fall as they fell. Why should I accept that the roll of the die is fixed but that his decision is not? It is just as possible that before the foundation of the world it was determined that John at this moment would choose to use that skill to lift skirts and that the dice would fall as they did. If all things are determined, that would include our choices; in this case, it is not whether John making a different choice would change the roll of the dice, but whether John was capable of making a different choice. I would like to think he was, but there is part of me that doubts that.
• Of course, he overlooks another aspect of the situation. Let us suppose that had he made the choice to use the same skill in a different application I would have rolled the same numbers. That means he would again have botched. However, between rolling the skill check and rolling botch I made the botch list, and my making the botch list was influenced by his intended use of the skill. That list reads:
  

  1. Throw target person
  2. Brain burn
  3. Throw nearby object
  4. Teleport target person
  5. Teleport self
  6. Throw self
  7. Psionic Shock Wave
  8. Neural Breakdown
  9. Target is a man
  10. Dissolve floor

  Botch options numbers 1, 4, and 9 only make sense given that the use of the skill somehow involved a separate "target" person; without that context, I would not have listed those botch options. That means that the number 2 botch option would probably have been something else. Note that the number 5 option might not be a bad outcome--the subsequent GE roll was not bad enough to take him, well, I can't say where, but wherever it took him might teach him more about his situation than he has yet deduced. There is always the possibility of a "good botch", and he might have gotten that even given the same exact rolls.

I am still not certain at all whether God controls the dice, always or ever or never (and given my dice luck, if He does He likes to see me lose a lot). However, I think that it is not at all certain that we can say God did not have anything to do with the roll of the dice and the outcome of the game. I'm inclined to think that He is interested in all we do, even in our recreational activities.

--M. J. Young

Are we trivializing God's omnipotence by believing that He chooses the outcomes of our games?

No. After all, if you want to believe in this as literally as possible, doesn't he (He? I'll use the capital H hereafter as a respective) choose pretty much everything, so long as it doesn't interfere with free will? It's not your free will whether you roll 12s or 7s, so it's up to Him, isn't it?

Are we minimizing his omnipresence by believing that He doesn't care about such things?

Yes. I honestly don't remember if it's in the Bible or the Qur'an, but I remember hearing a quote something to the effect of 'not a single sparrow falls from the sky, nor leaf from a tree, that God does not notice'. If He knows every blade of grass, every hair on your head - if He made them and put them there and made them work in such exacting detail that the mind-bogglingly complex nature of nature itself can prove testament to the existence of a divine will - then don't you think He cares about, or at least notices, the fall of the dice? Especially when the fall of the dice has moral implications He seems to care about (is gambling a sin?) or could affect the fate of someone who connects their fate intimately to His will (do the dice, in fact, never lie?).

I could believe a lot of this a lot more easily if you were still using a stopwatch for the dice. Then it would have taken you a different amount of time to push the button. It was an appropriate botch. Maybe I'll ask God about it when I get there.

Ya know, I've wondered about this a lot. A lot of the time when I am doing psychosis therapy, I randomize the songs in my MP3 player, and then put it on shuffle. I've got almost 1,000 songs in the player. Sometimes (A lot of the time) a song will come on that matches something that I am thinking about. Is that God changing the outcome of my MP3 player? I've wondered about that a lot. Who knows?

I know it's lame of me to not have read that and still reply, but I feel like I have something to say.

What if God's omnipotence and omnipresence is the knowledge of what was, is, and will be, in all situations? In that case, God can leave things to Fate, what's already going to happen, while still having the POWER to change it to go along a different road of faith, by freeing the Jews or by giving a poor, young man the opportunity to be a powerful person by having him win the jackpot at a casino 3 times in a row.

Any thoughts?

krillis - Can you mince that a bit finer? I'm not exactly following what new scenario you're presenting here. Are you asking, does He know everything that's possible to happen, and have the power to either alter things or not alter them? Well... yes, I suppose. But then there's the idea of free will. I'm trying my best to come at this from a Christian (or at least Abrahamic) perspective, but you'll have to forgive me, as it's been a while. Isn't free will supposed to be more or less sovereign?

Well, this is something that I had a real problem with in one of my worlds. I mentioned this in a different thread. The jeep crash that I caused at Pearl Harbor. For a long time, I couldn't understand why MJ didn't undo that. As he put it "I was eager to see, if given a situation in which you already knew the possible outcomes, would you maintain your policy of non-involvement." He and I must have radically different definitions of the word "eager" because if I was EAGER to see something like that, I would have said "I'll let it go this time, don't let that happen again." Ultimately though, it turned what would have been an exciting and fun world into a place where I learned quite a bit about the game, and how I should play my character. (Needless to say, that was the last time I'm going to willingly give up my guns)

My point is, if you believe that God controlled the dice, then it could be that God wanted me to learn something (which I did) from the jeep crash. I think it's kind of funny how people blame God for things that are, ultimately, our own fault. Yes, MJ probably could have turned back the clock and made it so that crash didn't happen. Just as God could have stopped the planes from hitting the World Trade Centers. Ultimately though, it is our own choice what happens to us, and we have to live with that.

Harry, I'll admit that I have wrestled quite a bit with the tension between free will and sovereignty. I think I've got an answer, but it's not an easy answer to explain or grasp.

It might help if we start with understanding God's objective. He did all this because He wants children--that is, He, in his triune state, existed in shared love, and wanted there to be more beings sharing more love, and the way to accomplish that was to create beings who would be to Him something like what children are to us, descended from Him and like Him in character.

This means that the Fall was not an unexpected mistake, but part of the plan. In order for there to be beings who understood love--well, to understand love you have to understand risk and sacrifice, and to understand risk and sacrifice you have to know pain and suffering. It is only in this fallen world that we can learn love, so this is what had to be.

In a sense, Adam was "set up to fall". God knew it would happen, and created the world in which it would happen (instead of some other world in which it wouldn't happen). Thus in a sense we can say that the fall is God's "fault". He could have prevented it by not creating this universe, by creating some different universe. He chose to create this universe, because it was the path that would achieve His objective.

Yet in another sense, it is entirely Adam's fault that he fell. The snake didn't tempt him, didn't pressure him, didn't cajole him. Eve fell because she was tempted. Adam made a decision to do what Eve did. God knew that this is what Adam would choose, but God did not in any way force Adam to choose it. Adam did what Adam wanted to do.

I have a few times played chess against a friend who is a master of the game. He is so much better than I that I never feel I have any chance at all. He acts, I react. In a very real sense he controls what I am doing, because he can predict with a high degree of accuracy how I will respond to each move he makes. I do not know what it is he expects me to do. Nor am I aware of any compulsion on my will forcing me to make the moves he wants. Rather, I look at the board and do that which seems like the best move to me. He already knows what the best possible moves are, and what I am likely to recognize as good moves, and which of those I am likely to choose given his board position. Thus my moves do not surprise him, and he very much controls what I do.

I use this illustration because despite the fact that my friend is controlling my moves, he is not negating my free will. Rather, he is using my free will against me. Knowing how I will react, he chooses moves that will direct my responses where he wants me to go.

A point I make on the Temporal Anomalies site is appropriate here: if we were to rewind history to some point in the past just prior to when you made some significant choice, and at the same time erased everything you knew back to that instant, so that you faced the same choice in the same situation with exactly the same knowledge base and feelings, you would choose the same thing. I chose to do what I have done, and were I to live it over without the benefit of the knowledge gained through it I would choose to do the same--at each turn, given the same information and being the same person, I would choose the same action.

That means that I am completely predictable to someone who knows me well enough, and that I can be manipulated by someone who knows me well enough and has sufficient ability to control my circumstances. Yet I am still choosing freely--I am still doing what I want to do, what I decide to do, given the information available to me. Further, there are undoubtedly some things I could not be induced to do no matter what you did. I could not be induced to kill my wife, even were it apparent that she was going to kill me; I would instead allow her to do that. There are undoubtedly other things I could not be induced to do--I would never freely choose to do them. I would never order hot peppers on a sandwich for myself, because the very smell of them sickens me. Some things I can be induced to do; others I cannot.

God already knows who can be induced to trust Him and who cannot, and He manipulates the world to the end that those who can be brought to trust Him will be, and will be forged into the people He is trying to create, those children of God who love Him and each other and are willing to sacrifice for each other. Within that, every choice we make is freely made in the sense that it is exactly what we want to do in these circumstances; the circumstances are designed to lead us to the choices that form us into who we are to be--or to reveal who we are becoming.

I think I'll post this and then respond to Kurt, so it doesn't get lost in the larger post.

--M. J. Young

Kurt wrote, "God can leave things to Fate, what's already going to happen, while still having the POWER to change it to go along a different road of faith...."

I think the problem arises in the concept of "Fate".

C. S. Lewis once suggested that a strict determinist could believe that God answered the prayers of his people. The example in question was that the mother prayed for her son on the battlefield and the son was unscathed. One might argue that it was mere chance, that the path of the winds and the flight of the bullets and the timing of the various events all came together such that no bullets hit that young man. However, Lewis observed that given the omnipotence and omniscience of God, it is entirely possible that God knew what the mother was going to pray before the world was created, and as he gave the universe its first push, he directed it such that on that particular day and time the winds would be blowing in exactly the right way and the events timed perfectly such that that mother's prayer was answered, that no bullets hit her son.

Think of it as the most incredibly complex pool shot anyone has ever made, that in making the first break God has cleared the table, putting every ball into the exact pocket intended.

Thus the concept of Fate as independent of God collapses. God knows before He starts the world exactly what will happen as a result of that first push, all the way to the end. And it won't help to say that man's free will derails that, because God already knows what each of us will choose and do, and so has already taken that into account. And even when it is only a man's plan, it is thought to be a better plan when it solves multiple problems. God's plan thus must take into account every act of every person, ever outcome God desires along the way.

In short, God need not ever intervene in the sense that He needs to change "Fate". "Fate" is what will happen based on what God did at the beginning, and God already knew all of that. The only reason for God to intervene, in terms of Fate, is if when God started everything He recognized that there were going to be a few spots along the way where he was going to have to bump the table to get the balls where He wanted them. (Some would say that would be cheating, but then, we don't have the luxury of knowing the rules.) More commonly, God intervenes directly and miraculously to demonstrate that He can--God proves that He can control this or that to demonstrate that He does control everything else.

Thus the difference between "Fate" and "Miracle" is not whether God has chosen the outcome, but whether God has allowed His hand to be seen when He does so. Further, since the Miracle is the moment when God reveals His hand, the need for the miracle is part of the plan, to give God the opportunity to make an appearance on the Earthly stage that will be recognized by those who see it. Otherwise we might not realize that He is there controling everything all the time.

--M. J. Young

Further, there are undoubtedly some things I could not be induced to do no matter what you did. I could not be induced to kill my wife, even were it apparent that she was going to kill me; I would instead allow her to do that. There are undoubtedly other things I could not be induced to do--I would never freely choose to do them. I would never order hot peppers on a sandwich for myself, because the very smell of them sickens me. Some things I can be induced to do; others I cannot.

MJ, you're doing exactly what you were so adamantly against others doing in a different thread. Don't say that there's no way you could be induced to kill your wife. Given the proper circumstances, anyone could be induced to do anything. Terri Schaivo was a great example of this. When they were first married, if her husband had been asked "Would you ever kill Terri?" He surely would have said "No Way!!!!" See what I mean?

Also, if the incentive was great enough, I bet you could be induced to eat hot peppers. If someone offered to pay off your mortgage, I'm sure you could be induced to eat one single hot pepper. Again, see what I mean?

MJ TWO POSTS!!

Further, there are undoubtedly some things I could not be induced to do no matter what you did. I could not be induced to kill my wife, even were it apparent that she was going to kill me; I would instead allow her to do that. There are undoubtedly other things I could not be induced to do--I would never freely choose to do them. I would never order hot peppers on a sandwich for myself, because the very smell of them sickens me. Some things I can be induced to do; others I cannot.

Or if killing your wife was the only way to save the lives of all five of your sons. Inaction means they all die, killing your wife is the only way to save the five sons. Don't say you wouldn't consider it. She would probably support you in that choice anyway.

MJ THREE POSTS (It's a habit)

Regarding your chess playing friend. The way to beat him is to not make the best strategical moves, but to make moves that are the most UNstrategical. This will confuse him, giving you the edge. Seriously. I've read that it is not uncommon for completely novice chess players to beat master players. The novice doesn't make the "expected" moves, and so keeps things interesting.

a1nut - Kinda like how the only fight Miyamoto Musashi ever lost was to a peasant with a quarterstaff?

MJ - So you're saying that God doesn't really Control your fate, so much as He Predicts it? Knowing the outcome of the choices you will make does not negate your ability to make them. Hmm... yeah, I could accept that.

I think that solves our initial question, too. If, knowing that John would try to TK flick skirts, God guided the dice (Which are NOT a function of John's free will or MJ's) so that the outcome would affect the future choices made by John, who considers his fate to be influenced by God. Predicting John's choice of action does not negate his ability to choose that course, but the bump - the "queen's gambit" if you will - that resulted from it might influence - influence but not FORCE - his future choices.

I would give a "thumbs up" for that, but we don't have graphics here and I don't use them in places that do, so there's no point bemoaning that. I think we're pretty close on this.

--M. J. Young

a1nut - Kinda like how the only fight Miyamoto Musashi ever lost was to a peasant with a quarterstaff?

Osevens, no, I would say that's because a staff is a much better weapon than a sword. A 6 foot staff against a 3 foot sword, who ya got?

And MJ, I noticed you didn't say a word about whether you could be induced to kill your wife under those circumstances. Under the right set of circumstances, anyone could be induced to do anything.

All right, I will concede that if God clearly and convincingly directed me to do so, I would do so. Less than that, I doubt it. There are some people you come to trust, including their judgment.

Besides, I think I could prevent my wife from killing her sons without killing her, if it came to that.

--M. J. Young

Besides, I think I could prevent my wife from killing her sons without killing her, if it came to that.

Uh, no MJ. I was thinking more along the lines of one of the traps from the SAW movie series. I really like these movies for their ingenious traps, and the makeup effects. A trap that Jigsaw would pull would be something like:

A seesaw balance beam. Your wife on one side, your five sons on the other. Doing nothing will cause the whole contraption to drop into a vat of sulphuric acid. The only way to save the five sons is to change the weight of the seesaw. The only way to change the weight of the seesaw is to knock your wife off of it. (I've never met her, I'm not making any kind of fat jokes, it's just for the illustration.) This will cause the seesaw to tip so your sons can step off. The only way you have to knock your wife off of the seesaw is to shoot her in the chest with a shotgun. She is awake and able to talk to you, but is incapacitated to the point that she cannot step off the beam under her own power. Otherwise, she would probably do so, and save you the trouble. Do nothing and they all get lowered into the vat of acid, knock your wife off with the shotgun, and the sons live. That's the kind of traps that the SAW movies present people. If faced with that, you can't honestly say you wouldn't consider it.

And BTW, taking the shotgun and shooting the guy that put them there is not a viable option. You only have 1 shotgun shell, and by the time you shot him, everyone on the seesaw would be dead. Also, trying to add your own weight to the side with your sons will just tip the whole thing into the acid.

So, I guess the choice you're presented with here is do you let your wife die a relatively quick and painless death to save your sons, or do you watch them all die a horrible, excruciating death in the acid? That sounds like a no-brainer to me, but I'll let MJ give his thoughts.

I remember MJ and I discussed the famous short story 'Cold Equations' which has a guy, the pilot of a spaceship, who gets a female stowaway. He tosses her out the airlock.

In the story, he has to because of circumstances.

But MJ did not agree with that answer, and I was later tempted by his response to sometime write a short story refuting 'CE'. He said he would always try, and he might have helped me see that there were a number of things that 'forced by necessity' pilot could have done.

John Campbell, the extraordinarily famous and influential editor, who bought CE, wanted to mess with people's minds in ways that I'm not sure were good for them or society. He may have wanted to subvert the moral order. Defenders might say he was merely trying to get people to see subtleties, but I suspect thats not the case although I certainly can not even come close to proving it.

I see MJ's reply as a rebuke to that subversion.

John, I would have to be there, or at least "there" in a role playing sense such that I could consider the alternatives.

In the first theatrically released Spiderman movie, the Green Goblin attempted to force Spiderman to make exactly this kind of choice--the love of his life or the carload of kids, to put it alliteratively. Spiderman made the choice a hero has to make: I don't accept your alternatives, and I save both.

Now, maybe we would all die if I tried to save both; but I do not have to put my wife in the acid to get her off the see-saw. If I can get a rope secured to something, I can drop down and lift her from it.

Now, maybe that's not something I would be capable of doing, but since I find the trap a bit incredible and I am not certain I have the skill to kill someone with a shotgun from any distance at which I could not instead throw them a bowline and lift them off, we're talking hypothetical anyway. And you can tell me that there's no rope and nothing to which I could secure it, but I can make a suitable cord from the clothes I am wearing (jeans and a leather belt are pretty tough material, and I can tie solid knots). Also, given what you described, my sons could manage to send one of their own across the beam to bring her over to their side, and as the weight shifted so would the beam. I can think of a dozen things that might work, and if I keep looking I'll find one that will.

That's one of the reasons I greatly prefer real role playing games over computer simulations: I can devise ways to accomplish my objectives that the programmer might not have considered, and in a real role playing game I have someone to adjudicate my success while in a CRPG I fail simply because the programmer didn't see a possibility which I saw.

So I don't buy it.

Maybe I'm like Captain Kirk facing the Kobayashi Maru: I don't believe in a no-win situation. I'll find a way, or die trying.

--M. J. Young

That's exactly why I will try to avoid being the hero at all costs. It's too hard to try to figure out what to do and when to do it.