I’ve been thinking about determinism and true randomness for a while now, and out of that came what I would like to call: The Sami Paradox.
Imagine two parallel universes. They’re kept perfectly identical by some external synchronizer, down to every last atom, every quantum state. Now imagine we remove the synchronizer.
What happens next?
- Do the two universes stay in sync forever?
- Do they diverge immediately, at the very next event?
- Or is there some mysterious window of time where they remain aligned before drifting apart?
The strangeness of this paradox is that even though the third option sounds plausible, only the first two answers are possible.
- If the universe is truly deterministic, then once the synchronizer has aligned them, they’ll evolve identically forever.
- If the universe contains true randomness, then the very next “random” event breaks the symmetry causing immediate divergence.
There’s no natural middle ground.
Other ways to see it:
- If there’s a person named Alan in both universes, will his very next action be the same in both?
- Or even closer: will Alan’s very next thought be the same in both?
This paradox becomes a way to ask: What makes “me” me? Is my identity guaranteed by deterministic unfolding, or could a random atom flip it entirely?