Does quantum theory imply the entire Universe is preordained?
nature.com
nature.com
This is a treacherous self deception by which a few smarty pants and a whole lot of restless wonderers poison themselves intellectually (the arguments of determinism.)
This is like having a polite conversational argument with a solipsist, who points to your lack of “proof.”
Quantum theory says that the Universe is potential distributing, not arrangements of states.
Objective existential reality is impermanent. It is decay and interference.
All that we have comes from this decay and interference.
All the rest of existential reality emerges from the interference of all that is left of whatever there is. As it burns down and blows as cinder upon the cosmic winds.
Decay, and the constructive or destructive interference of external influences in realtime is independent of what may be projected by arranged states.
This drives a nail in the coffin of determinism. For the whole Universe decay itself is an example of an exogenous phenomenon, for every other scope (domain) within, that uncertainty is inherited from the enveloping domain.
And at long last, consciousness is a vectoring phenomena.
Consciousness, wherever it is found, is a feedback mechanism which itself may cause constructive and destructive interference.
The word “emergence” with which we are so enamored literally means that which produced potential outcomes exceeding the sum of potentials found in constituent parts.
A car for instance emerges the ability to transport mass far beyond any output obtained from any part. At the expense of additional potential of course. (And here we can argue fuel density or efficiency.)
All matter and whatever makes it up is all “emergent” from the decay and collapse of potentials long before.
Life on Earth emerges in some part on the waste exhaust of Sol as our sun burns down, and the rest of the debris of dead stars before us.
The quantum domain is the lubricant between Universal Potential and existential reality (state resolving in the moment of now.) This lubricant may be tuned and interfered with to achieve certainty (as we will discover in future quantum technology) however it is potential resolving to state, not more states interacting (“all the way down”.)
And to answer, what information and intelligence do for us is to achieve most optimal resolve (iteratively).
If we are ignorant and confused waste and attrition takes the best of everything, when we are wise and prudent we conserve and invest potential, creating more potential.
Therefore yes; wisdom and prudence capacitates, conserves, and perpetuates potential (of existential being). Let’s call that objective “good”, and “bad” whatever squanders it (“potential”).
A star going super nova, generating a potential distribution so much finer than the potential of any matter in existential reality that it creates the very matter of existential reality. The moment of explosive action will have a moment such that the very quantum elements are assembled (all by passing chance collision).
These distributions and probabilities may be mathematically described and understood as a whole yet cannot account for any level of precision. Exactness is achieved in real time as the potentials cook in the blast (and more than one blast center.)
All this going on is one single star, and based on this what matter at which trajectory establish which might end up as planets, etc.
Some things cannot be known until other interactions have taken place.
The vast occurrence of galaxies of ever varying properties of distribution show how exotic this whole process is.
So the Universe is potential, which distributes over the negative spacial void. State is resolved in the moment of now through the constructive and destructive interference of everything around it (fundamental forces, as well as kinetic, etc.)
That “interference” is the well known “observation” only that all existence interferes with all other existence through gravity, etc.
We may conceptually and technologically unlock the mysteries of these mechanics yet forever remain a subject to their wiles.