Is the future inevitable?

Identical universes hmmmmmm.Does identical universes open the can of worms of stochastic drift and QM uncertainty principle, multiverses, probabilities and etc...
Its a crap shoot, (heh) see what I did there? I believe the universe is deterministic but it is so incredibly complicated in how every single event sparks zillions of other events on and on. It is for all intents and purposes indeterminate.
As far as human free will is concerned, it has been shown that the thing in your brain sitting in the "consciousness" chair, that you call YOU is actually not in the driver seat instead is directed by our subconscious brain. But that's ok too because the time between choices and choice is a few seconds so we get to maintain the illusion of being in charge. We may be like machines operating in a deterministic world that through cause and effect manipulates how we interface with reality. This sounds rather like there is no free will. But I contend it is just a matter of how you look at it. The ghost in the machine may reside within the quantum world.What intrigues me the is the idea of the brain possibly being a quantum computer. So far no experiments bear this out. The hypothesis is that there are quantum level entanglements in the microtubules of our brains resulting in consciousness.The jury is still out on this one, but it is one of the last bastion of hope the free willers myself included.Free Will versus the Programmed Brain - Scientific American

Hi Caffeine,Here is more recent paper published in Nature April 2008
hereIt seems to indicate at least seven full seconds of lag time before the conscious mind is aware and decides to do what the subconscious tells it to do.Another article published 2013.
Just a moment...
Click on PDF to read the paper.This may not be the end all of proving no free will, but it does seem to do more than mere assertion that the conscious mind is driving all our decisions and that the subconscious is doing it a full seven seconds before our conscious mind gets the memo.

Hi Stile, But scientist can. Scientist can know what your going to do up to 7 seconds before you do it. Granted it for now it is a simplistic experiment, but the foundations of this research is beginning to show our subconscious and body are pulling the strings. But are you making conscious decisions or merely being alerted after the fact of what your body and subconscious was going to do anyway? As current research is beginning to show.
But wait.......
It gets even better than that!
**best Morpheus voice**
What if I told you our brains may be influenced by the the bugs living in our digestive tracts.The most extreme example of brain control is the Zombie ant fungus A fungus that makes the ant bite and hang on vegetable material, so the fungus can propagate itself. Certainly a case of reality being stranger than fiction. I know, I know a ant brain compared to a human brain no comparison. But still intriguing that the human microbiome is now being studied to realize how much this collective organism affects us. Their cells out number ours 10 to 1. Perhaps, but more and more it is beginning to look like human beings are like machines that have a brain that responds to our hormones, biochemistry, pheromones, tactile receptors, our internal gut flora biochemistry, conditioning,subconscious and who knows what other influences.At the end of the day it is as you say a matter of how you look at it.

Thats rights Tangle,
Kind of humbling that from the big bang, the formation of the universe stars, galaxies, planets;to the formation of Earth, life and man.... and every conceivable event thereafter that has resulted in you posting that

As I understand it, no. The salient point I think is that the areas of the brain, that have been mapped that are responsible for non conscious thought are lighting up and indicating the choice of Right or Left ...before the person presses the freaking button.

quote:

---

2).Next, we addressed the
key question of this study, whether any brain region encoded the
subject’s motor decision ahead of time. Indeed, we found that two
brain regions encoded with high accuracywhether the subject was about
to choose the left or right response prior to the conscious decision
(threshold P 0.05, family-wise error—corrected for multiple spatial
and temporal comparisons;

---

Then the person selects a letter that corresponds to time when they made the choice for the purpose of showing how soon the area lit up before the person chose.
In my view it is still your brain and you are still the one pressing the button. So who cares, it is just a matter of how you look at it imo.
However it you care to check it out:
I saw a very interesting documentary on PBS in October called
"The Brain with Dr. Eagleman The Brain with David Eagleman | PBS
Episode 3 is called "Who is In Control?" They had a interesting experiment where a subject was placed in a scan and a hat/head piece put on the subject that could stimulate areas of the brain.
By using a combination of mapping and stimulation technology the neurologist was able to have the subject make choices several seconds before the subject reported making the choice. The mind blowing part being they did not make the choice even though they where adamant afterwards they did. For some reason it seems the conscious mind maintains the illusion of control no matter what.I dont expect this to convince anyone though. Check it out and judge for yourself. It's a interesting series.

STEP AWAY FROM THE BONG.

Hi Son Goku,So the universe/cosmos is in your opinion.a) deterministic and finiteb) deterministic and infinitec) indeterministic and finited) inderterministic and infinitee) a combination of a and cf) a combination of b and d

Tangle, he said not deterministic.50 million "little grey cells" just shit the bed mon ami. ~ as inflected by Poirot