What Are the Odds of That?

Decades ago we met a man who had just published a book about things Einstein never said. That was well before the internet and blogs and social media. These days you don't need to buy the book. Google returns 206 results for articles containing the phrase "things Einstein never said" (those exact words using quotation marks). Searching without the quotes, I found one source that reports Einstein saying, "I never said half the crap people say I did," which makes one more thing Einstein never said. If you are famous enough, you become a magnet for misattribution.

I did similar searches for "things Richard Feynman never said" and "things Niels Bohr never said". They were both great physicists, but neither attracts much misattribution. Even baseball doesn't beat Einstein. I got only 8 hits for "things Yogi Berra never said". If you want attention for a pet aphorism, your best move is to attribute it to Einstein, the archetypal brainy professor. I admit to being tempted.

 So how about this one:

You may recognize the connection to something Einstein did say, "God does not play dice." I'm not qualified to debate quantum mechanics with Albert and his friends, but this is my blog and I can say what I want within reason without going to jail. 

If I understand Einstein (which is unlikely) he was reluctant to give up on determinism (effects occurring as the result of observable causes). Determinism works pretty well at the human scale and larger. According to quantum mechanics, at the atomic scale and smaller, anything possible is more or less likely and indeterminate, meaning you can't tell why something happens. You can determine the odds by keeping track of events. However, when I say "God plays dice," you almost certainly reply "nope, you're wrong; everything happens for a reason." We experience rational cause and effect at the human scale and expect to find it everywhere. That is where Einstein got stuck.

It happens that Einstein was mistaken. God plays dice with the atoms, and chance is the mechanism behind creation, which was going on randomly for billions of years before mindful organisms evolved. Chance continues roiling out of the quantum realm even now. God is not an old guy pushing the atoms around with his thoughts to make life easy for his friends. In the beginning, creation was not intentional. Intentions are us. Intent is the accumulated effect of countless random atomic events filtered by survival fitness and passed on to offspring. Although the intentional mind is a late arrival, it has a say in what happens next. We play the odds, which has made us prosper, and that is the reason we are here. If God is more subtle than we can imagine, the result is no less miraculous.

So choose.
Riches or restraint.
Growth or grace.
Rights or respect.
Bombs or belonging.
Detente or death.
Noise or music.
God whispers possibilities
and we have a say in what happens next.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

P.S. I once aspired to play the violin. Let me tell you.

Einstein's imagination took him there

through time and space into the photon's lair

where quantum strangeness was a step too far,

and God-with-dice a thought he couldn't bear.

If he had checked his visage in the mirror

the evidence for quantumness was clear.

For when the void erupted on a whim,

it then, without a cause, effected him. 

What are the odds of that?