is what I think, my inner monologue, an independent variable? Or like cutting down trees, breathing and moving air, mowing my lawn, or picking up a dollar I find: it has an effect in the massive function that governs us all?

i think i get what you're asking...

its an independent variable, unless you believe in mind readers, no one knows exactly what you are thinking, and therefore it can not possibly have an effect on the rest of the "massive function that governs us all".

if you want to get literal though, it could have an effect. lets say one day you do about 10x more thinking to yourself than you usually do. now while inner brain thinking probably doesn't consume that much more energy, maybe that one day you do the 10x extra thinking it causes your body to use up more energy than it would have. eventually, you have to replace that minute amount of energy that you used, which changes the "massive function that governs us all".

so i guess it all depends on how you look at it.

(this made much more sense when i first started writing it).

You don't have to be a mind reader to figure out what someone is thinking, sometimes. It might not be to a T, some people just show what they're thinking in ways you can pick up on.

Yeah, I don't think i'm making sense tonight, either. haha

It all depends on perspective. Like...pretty much everything in the hypothetical universe.

In the literal world, you're random thoughts and actions end up to be exactly that: random. You live your life from day to day by that inner monologue, just like everyone else does. Basically, you're mind is just looking out for itself and is another independent variable like all the rest.

Now if we're talking about the realm of predestination/precognition here, then it becomes a different subject altogether. You're mind, that inner monologue, is what drives you to do what you're going to do...It's what tells you to cut down trees, mow the lawn, and pick up that god-damn dollar. Therefore, it would seem to be one of the largest contributing factors to "the massive function that governs us all"...Minds, ideas, and personalities clashing with one another.

Now, basic theory of predestination states that it was your fate to find that dollar bill, so it's yours for the taking. Here is where your 'independent variable' comes in...You could choose not to pick up that dollar. Sure, it might change the outcome of your future events, but thats where precognition exhibits it's flexibility:

Theoretically, it could've been you're fate to see that money and not pick it up all along. People just think, by making the choice intentionally, that they're 'beating fate'. Fate can't be beaten, because fate is merely the bastard son of time. Nothing stops the future from unfolding as it will.

The way I think about it is that we are all part of a larger intelligence. Alot of thoughts seem to be random such as dream sequences because we are not receptive to the thought as a whole. Doing so in a normal state of consciousness would seem to be approaching impossible since no individual has the cognitive ability to process that amount of information. There seems to be a filter in place that limits our input from the "source" in order to have some cognitive capacity left to process input from "reality". I like to call these filters ego, being the capacity that defines our individuality.
Applying this to your' question, the ego would be the independant variable in the equation. Total devotion of cognitive awareness to the "source" would remove "reality" from the equation totally. By limiting just enough of it to be aware of the tree would put you in a position to forever contemplate all that is tree just as we are forever contemplating all that is "reality". There is a point where a balance is struck and we are given the ability to act on our "random thoughts" in a manner that is in compliance with our ego.
This is by no means the way it is, but it is what I believe to be truth.

Our mind eloquently gives ourselves the illusion of choice, while in reality there exists no such thing. And yet as hard as you try to convince yourself that choice is indeed an illusion, it is virtually impossible for us to comprehend.

We must look at our own existence (at the individual level) as beginning with a single chemical reaction. To make things simple, we will say this chemical reaction is the insemination of a mother's egg. From this point, that being's entire existence will consist of a chain of chemical reactions, all stemming from that first reaction. If we take the basic principle of chemistry which states that "all chemical reactions are predictable," then every chemical reaction which takes place in your brain during your life, is already determined by the previous reaction, all the way back to that first reaction which was your inception.

So how can we actually be making choices? From chemical reaction one to this very moment, each reaction has had a pre-determinable result before heading into the next. All our brain is, is a set of rather complex chemical reactions which control how our body functions.

We, of course, are quite far from understand the human brain enough to do this, and probably lack the technology to do the massive amount of chemical reaction prediction and analysis needed to do anything useful with this theory, but the theory itself is solid and makes logical sense.

At the moment I was conceived (or even earlier if you think about how this would cascade back to the beginning of time) there was one and only one pre-determined chain of chemical reactions that would occur during my life -- it is immutable. So I am not making choices, there are no choices to made. There is no beating fate by coming to a decision then quickly changing it for that express purpose. Our lives cannot be mapped by an exponentially growing tree of decisions and outcomes -- it is a perfectly straight line.

Peace.

i don't see why people think the two options dom has presented contradict each other.

just because our thoughts are one big pre-determined series of chemical interactions doesn't mean we aren't actually making choices from moment to moment. that's the magic of time.

Time is the ultimate illusion.

Thoughts cannot be simplified down to simple brain chemistry. The simple fact that we don't know exactly how the mechanism works means that it is possible that thoughts can either be internal or external to the physical brain. My own feelings on the subject is that the brain is a sort of receptor or antenna to something that is less tangible. I know this can't be proven, but it can't be disproven either, so it remains a possibility.

- Albert Einstein

Everything can be simplified down to chemistry. We may not know all of the intricate details about the human brain, but we do know that the human thought process is merely electrical signals and chemical reactions at the basic level. And you're right, you're theory (which for all anyone knows could be right), cannot be disproven. But I could just as easily say we are all being controlled by a giant pink bunny that lives in the center of the earth and the same rule applies :)