September 14, 2009
I had a deck of cards on my desk and I was practicing shuffling the ace of spades to the top of the deck, practicing false cuts and the like, but eventually I started playing Solitaire. I remember playing a lot as a kid, and I remember my grandmother playing at the dining table in the late morning. She remembers her grandfather playing solitaire for hours at a time.
There is a curious thing that happens in your mind when you deal cards, and it comes out strongly in the version of solitaire that I play. It’s a straight deal of cards into a grid four across and three high. Whenever the value of a showing pair adds up to ten, each card can be covered with a card out of the deck. Tens and face cards are covered when there are four of a kind, and the game is won when there are no cards left to deal. The basic rules are quite simple, but winning deals are relatively rare.
When we think about a deck of cards, a strange thing happens. We know there are fifty-two cards that exist within the deck, but we cannot know their order until they are dealt. This is the basic premise of card games: each card is indistinguishable from the others until it is revealed. It is the revelation of the order of cards and the patterns formed that make up all card games. Our interest arises out of the uncertainty of what card will appear next.
This uncertainty reminds me of quantum mechanics. An electron, for instance, that travels from one place to another may have the possibility of many paths for its journey, just as the first card we turn over from a shuffled deck potentially could be any one of the fifty-two cards that comprise the deck. What happens to the electron is that it actually takes every available path all at the same time and interferes with itself as it does. If you take a card from the top of a shuffled deck, you might consider that card as simultaneously existing as every one of the cards it might be. It is only when we turn the card over to reveal it that it becomes known. The same thing happens with the electron: when we observe it as it travels, we can see it moving along a single specific course. Upon observation, uncertainty is dispelled.
It is the uncertainty of which card will be revealed, the mental projection of an unknown card existing simultaneously as all possible cards that gives rise to radical superstitions about cards. I have often been suspicious that having to choose the covering of one card instead of another, say for instance if I deal a six when there have been two fours already put down, will change the arrangement of the remaining cards in the deck.
But something strange happens to an electron when we observe it. When it traveled unobserved, it did not take a single path from one place to another but in fact took every one of those paths. However, when we observe the electron on its course, when we watch as it follows a single path, the results of its travel have changed. The resultant pattern of observed electrons is dramatically different than that of unobserved electrons. Observing an electron changes the way it behaves.
Cards are different. Despite our uncertainty in which card might be revealed next, there is no real uncertainty in the card itself. Each card exists as a separate object, and the dynamics of shuffling are themselves measurable and their results predictable. Measuring a shuffle will not change its outcome the way measuring an electron will. The uncertainty of cards is our own mental projection upon those cards. But it’s a hard projection to dispel. I can never know with absolute certainty that the deal would have come out the same if I had chosen to cover the other four. There is a niggling doubt no matter how I try to reason, a lingering belief that maybe, just maybe, the state of the cards in the undealt deck were in flux up until the moment when I turned them over. Is it possible that the universe exists in this way?
One of the oft-repeated descriptions of an uncertain universe that arises out of quantum theory is the idea that at any moment the keyboard I am typing on can turn into a block of cheese. Every possible state of matter that can be changed by observation (such as the changes in behavior of an electron) in fact spawns a new universe where that particular state exists: for each experiment done where we observe the movement of an electron, there is a universe where the electron traveled a slightly different route. Every moment of observation endlessly multiplies an infinite number of universes. In one universe I am typing on a keyboard. In another, I am typing on cheese. In another, a block of cheese is typing on me. Our experience is based on whichever universe where we happen to exist.
This is untenable. If the universe actually followed this rule, then science would be generally impossible. We are able to measure and predict countless phenomena in our every day experience. When a pitcher throws a baseball, we can predict its path. Our prediction will never fail because the baseball has become a sphere of cheddar. What does this mean?
When I deal my game of solitaire, I am employing a set of cards that are themselves made up of quantum particles. It is not the uncertainty of the individual electrons that I measure when I check to see whether the card is a two or a four. The numbers painted on the cards are made up of billions upon billions of particles working in concert, and that collective phenomenon does not change, no matter the uncertainty that rules the individual particles.
The card--and all things knowable in the universe--may in fact be an emergent phenomenon that arises out of the uncertainty of quantum mechanics. String theory (in quite basic terms) describes all points of space as coiled bundles of extra-dimensionality, on which various harmonics bring about the kinds of particles and objects that make up the universe. It may be that every aspect of the universe (even the unpredictability) can be rendered down to the fundamental interactions on this minute scale. Space and Time themselves may have arisen out of the interactions among these harmonics. The universe as we know it may be an emergent phenomenon and not the fundamental existence we assume it is.
If that is the case, could my game of solitaire be predetermined? No matter how I shuffle the deck, no matter how I cut it or rearrange the cards, is everything that I do governed by predictable and consistent rules? Once the cards are shuffled, there is no fundamental uncertainty in the order in which the cards will come out. No choice of mine can ever change the outcome.
What does this mean for personal choice? Whether I choose to cover the four in the top row or the four in the bottom row, the game as a whole does not change. The final configuration will always arise in the same way. If the order of the cards predetermines that the game will be lost, then eventually the configuration will arise where there are no more moves. The only thing that my choices can change is the orientation of that configuration.
Let me assume a deal where only fourteen cards are drawn. The first twelve come out and there is only one match, revealed by the last card dealt. Up until now there have been no choices possible, but that last card, a six, reveals a choice. The third card dealt was a four, as was the tenth card. Due to the known rules of the universe (the predictable arrangement of the deck), it can be known that the next two cards will be a king and a queen (although the player will not know this until he turns the cards over). As soon as those cards are put down, there will be no more moves and the game will end. At this moment of choice, I can affect the solitaire game to a possibility of four configurations. Either I place the next card (the king) on one of the two fours, or I place it upon the six. If I choose a four, the final card (the queen) must cover the six: and choosing the six, I then must choose which four the queen will cover. No matter my choice, the game is predetermined to be lost. The only thing I have altered is the final arrangement: in what positions the king and queen end up.
It may be that human consciousness is merely an emergent phenomenon of the universe--interactions of the harmonics of the universe that build up our neural brains and the further emergent capacity for our experience of subjective reality (the emergence of an observer)--and none of what we consider to be choices are truly so. It may be that our subjective awareness invents the idea of choice when in fact everything we do is predictable by the fundamental laws that describe the makeup of the universe.
Or perhaps our choices are real. Perhaps what we do can affect the universe, but our effect is marginal: like the game of solitaire, we cannot change the outcome of the game, only its final arrangement. Given a deck of infinite cards, there will eventually be a state where no further moves are possible. The player’s choices can never change that final outcome, nor when or how it will occur, because nothing the player does can alter the order of the draw.
Another way to look at the universe, which may save our abject need for centrality, is to consider that the game of solitaire has absolutely no meaning unless we play it. It is by dealing out the cards that I create and experience the game. Perhaps the universe exists as it does because we observe it. As we delve further into the recesses of uncertainty, we map out a collective certainty that governs that which we know. Had humanity never evolved consciousness, we would never have been capable of affecting the uncertainty of the universe as observers. What we see when we explore has arisen because we explore. The universe looks the way it does because we are looking. It exists because we are aware of it.
Despite the fact that every game of solitaire that I play is predetermined, I insist on laying out the cards one by one to discover how it will turn out. I make the choices that the game lets me make and I have no regret for them. I let the game unfold as it does and I enjoy the moments of joy and frustration as they arise.