If you ever learn about programming, especially using C programming language, you will most likely know about undefined behavior . Undefined behavior in C programming language is basically anything can happen at that point, there are no restrictions on the behavior of the program. When we enter the undefined behavior zone, the program behavior become unpredictable, the program can crash or even delete the root filesystem, anything is valid.
A lot of people didn’t like undefined behavior in C programming language most likely because it’s unpredictable or non-deterministic, but the benefit of undefined behavior is that we make the C programming language implementation very flexible. Whether that is good or bad depends on your perspective.
And then one day, I read about this imaginary dialog between Oscar Wilde and Artificial Intelligence (AI) . One thing that stand out to me from those dialog is “to define is to limit.” And that got me thinking, maybe we don’t need to define everything, like the future for example. The only thing that is certain in the future of all living being is dead, and maybe that’s because dead is the part of living being definition or limitation (?). Other than that, I don’t think anything is certain in the future.
Some people try to define the future, like “this is the future” or “that is the future,” and I am like “how did they know what would happen in the future?” And I have a hypothesis that these people trying to limit the future to something that they already know or familiar with. Some people is afraid of the unknown, so they are trying to make everything known, including the future. Whether their claim will become true or not, that remains to be seen. But the interesting part is that, by defining the future, there is a possibility that someone will prevent that kind of future to happen. We are not living in the future, we are living in the present, and there’s enough time to change what the future looks like. Maybe there’s some kind of paradox by defining what would happen in the future, and what I mean by that is by defining or claiming something would happen in the future, the possibility of that future to happen can reduce depending on how many people support the idea or not.
With that in mind, if you heard or read someone claiming about the future, you should take a skeptical stance to their statement. Do not limit your future by someone else’s definition. The future is undefined, anything can happen in the future.