Matter thinks it knows itself, thinks that it can predict itself, but it really can’t, sometimes it can make some good predictions that often work, other times, it won’t.
Is it mind over matter ? we predict and make things happen, or is it that we think things happen the way we wanted ? We always fool ourselves in the end. God plays dice, but dice is also playing god.
The uncertainty principle suggest exactly that: we can predict something up to a certain precision, but not past a certain point: humans die before they reach 200 years old, but the precise age of death of a specific person is unknown, unless you say that before 200 years is good enough: if you assign that as infinite precision then you always win, you control all reality: in fact you can assign anything anyway and take advantage of the fact that matter thinks it knows itself but it doesn’t, but you do know all of matter and reality because you assigned it that way.
You win, the laws of physics lose…
And you win even when you lose, because you assigned it that way.
I think that this is how the Origin of Life and the Origin of the Universe occurred.
Maybe the most that we can achieve is that we may know some general conditions where molecules polymerize, we can see some evolution or some portions, we can see some reactions and some primitive organisms evolve slightly, but past that we won’t see: it is like history, we know groups of people conflict, change organization, change power structures and interactions constantly (as man is the infinitely programmable machine, people and groups of people can be programmed (and program themselves) to act and interact in any of an infinite number of different ways), but we can never predict the exact sequence of events, like WW1 in Europe and then hitler in 1939, and WWII, etc. That exact sequence is just pure chance, and so is the exact structure of the simplest cell, let alone the exact structure of an ape or human…
The most important results in Science deal with what we cannot know, what our limits are, in what box we live in, where the edges of the box are: so we can’t travel faster than light, we can’t measure position and velocity to infinite precision at the same time (Uncertainty principle) and probably we can’t predict a precise given sequence of events exactly because there is no predetermined sequence, the sequence just happens, just occurs with no deeper reason or cause.
A bit like saying 4 guys playing 2 guitars, bass and drum will create music: but that those four guys will exactly create the 10 Beatles albums is totally unpredictable because things like that just happen with no deeper cause. Determinism is defeated.
But maybe I am wrong, and in virtual reality environment you can simulate the possibility to predict exact sequences no matter how far fetched…