While ruminating in the dead of night, I realized that determinism is incompatible with randomness (yay!). While it's true that physical processes can be traced down to the atomic level, and therefore follow a predictable trajectory back to whatever they manifest, there's an inherent randomness in the universe that prevents duplication under any but original conditions which are constantly changing, so it's always going to be a one-off event. The randomness is provided by natural atomic decay of elements and particles. Each element has a number of isotopes that loose ions at a predictable rate called the half life. Most of those newly freed ions get gobbled up by other nuclei to make other kinds of atoms. This is happening constantly everywhere especially inside stars.
OK, given there are 10 to the quadrillion-quadrillion-etc. atoms in the universe and 118+ elements, each with a half-life that looses ions which interact with the half-life of every other atom, produces randomness that would make Schrödinger swoon (but his cat would still be a nervous wreck). It might also allay any existentialistic fears some people might have of Astrology: that our every action is fore-spoken thus we're nothing but puppets designed to suffer. Ok but ignorance is still bliss though, that's why we love cats.
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