this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Some entities are more deterministic than others. A rock is more deterministic than an animal and a human is less deterministic than an animal because its "causal inertia" (the opposite of free will) is weaker: it can be influenced by more factors than the rock and is more unpredictable. Some people lead more deterministic lives than others.
I would say you’re referring more to complexity than determinism. More variables increases complexity but doesn’t necessarily decrease determinism. It depends on whether you believe some of those variables include true randomness though. For example, does quantum randomness affect anything? We’re led to believe it has no real effect on a macroscopic scale, but perhaps over a large enough amount of time and across a large enough set of variables the effect becomes noticeable. If that’s the case, determinism breaks down.