This question really made me think (a lot). Do [all] actions have a pre-determined outcomes, or can they all be different? In other words, do you think that when you make a decision, that was the decision you were destined to make, and what you think would have been a better option would have never happened?

Say you and a friend are going to the movies. You have $20, but you are saving some money for a bus ride home. However, you decide to gorge yourself with candy, spending $19.99... Definitely not enough for the bus ride home. In the end, you end up walking home, some 5 miles (your friend left early, and you also left your phone at home...no contact with people who may help, so you had no other way of getting home).

There were other options to take, like not wasting so much money, but rather getting one pack of candy, leaving you with [more than] enough money to get home. You think back to yourself..."Darn, instead of wasting so much money, I could have been a little smarter with my money." You already made the decision to buy candy...you can't go back in time to try the situation over again. The decision is final.

It's like you make one action, think about another path of action, but that would never have happened; it's just a thought.

             ____(path A)_______________ (life goes on)
            |
_____| 
(you)   |
            |  ___(path B)_________               (hypothetical)

Say the situation you were in earlier, the path you took was path A. It was a bad decision, you admit, and you think about a better decision you could have made, which is path B. However, maybe path A is the set course for your life...you were destined to make that choice...path B would have never happened at all. No matter what, that was just what you were going to do.

I am sorry if this is not clear, it's kind of hard to really post what I really am trying to say here (we all have those moments).?

Anyway, if you did understand (and don't think it's quite stupid), what do you think of this??

I don't really believe in destiny. Your future is the outcome of your choices and actions, so you have control over your own life (not the lives of anybody else). You might affect someone's life at some points, but you won't be able to take control over it.

ie. Student A is trying to make you a drug addict. That choice has been available for you. Now it's time to decide whether to follow it or just ignore student A and continue living as a good student. Lets just say you've chosen to become one of the drug users in your school, you ended up getting expelled, your parents disowned you when they found out about it, you became part of a syndicate, got chased by the police, had an unwanted child, and now you look back at that time when you agreed with student A's wish and that what if you've just refused instead to save your own future.

As what you could see, two paths were possible to take, it's not as if you only had one. What happened to you is your own fault for making a very bad decision for yourself; it's your own choice and not your destiny to throw a good life away. Yes, let's say student A was a big part of the reason why your life got messed up, but you're the one who decided for yourself, student A just tried to "affect" your life and he didn't control it.(Let's not include people with mental disorders and crime victims here in my explanation as it's a very different topic)

For the example about the candy, think of yourself as the one who walked 5 miles to get home for now. When you saw the candies being sold for $19.99, you were very aware that you needed the money for the bus. Now it's either you buy the candies and walk home, or to stop craving for candies for a bus trip. Unfortunately, you couldn't stop yourself so you've decided to get the candies. Now it's not your destiny that you're now walking home because you don't have enough money for transportation; it's your choice, it's the consequence of your bad decision. You were aware that it would happen to you if you chose the candies but you still persisted on buying.

This is an interesting question, one that science has been wrestling with (and in my opinion, always will be).

Scientifically, at first glance it seems that the future of everything can be calculated and predicted. For example, if I throw a ball, we can calculated where it will land based on gravity, mass, speed, friction, wind, etc. And so, theoretically, we can do this with everything. We could calculate every path of a snowflake in a blizzard, if only we had 100,000,000 great mathematicians using 100,000,000 supercomputers. And so, it is suspected that everything in the universe CAN be predicted with the right math equations and technology, even if we haven't discovered it yet. In other words, it seems like IF we had the knowledge and technology, we COULD calculate EVERYTHING that will happen, from what synapses will form in your brain and how people will act, to every last little detail that happens on this earth. All of it can be calculated, theoretically.

Now, this was a great disappointment for many people! But... we came to further discovery that changed our thinking again.

Quantum mechanics has shown us that there are things in the world that are IMPOSSIBLE to know. Not that we simply don't have the technology, but that are strictly impossible: the uncertainty principle. (As a quick example, it is impossible to know both the speed and location of an electron to a perfect degree). Now this principle states that there are NO 100% sureties in the universe. If I throw a ball, I can only state that there is a 98% chance it will land exactly 'here' because there is no way to know 100% what speed, location, gravity, etc there is!

Again, the uncertainty principle does not mean we don't have the math or technology to predict to 100% accuracy, it means the universe itself is not 100% accurate. (Look it up if your curious, it's amazing). So now, we see that it is impossible to predict everyone's exact actions; only probabilities. That makes a lot of sense to our human side, doesn't it?

So no, I don't think that everything is predestined. I believe humans are gifted with free choice, and while there are definitively some very accurate predictions that could theoretically be made about human behaviour, we will never know 100% an individual will choose to do.

Does anybody watch the show 'Community'? Reason why I ask is because there is an episode that takes on this multiple possibilities concept, and does it extremely well. Three of the characters have moved into an apartment together, so they have a housewarming party for the whole gang to celebrate having their own place. As the 7 of them are sitting at the table, and the buzzer rings. It is the pizza delivery guy. Someone has to go down to the bottom floor to get the pizza. So one of the characters hold up a dice and numbers off the members of the gang 1-6. Whoever's number the dice lands on has to get the pizza. One of the characters (Abed) says "You realize if you do this, you are creating 6 different timelines". So the whole episode from that point on loops back to show 7 different outcomes based on that dice roll. A lot of events happened in almost every dice roll, but little details changed. Those little details caused very different outcomes. In the most evil timeline, a fire starts, one of the characters gets shot in the leg, one loses an arm, one scorches his vocal cords from the smoke of the fire. In the best timeline, everyone is at their happiest. The other timeline has a lot of in between results where some are happy, some are sad. Every one of these scenarios all stemmed from who went down to pick up the pizza. 

Though this thread talks more about endless possibilities but only one actually happening. This example promotes the possibility that every time you are presented with a scenario with multiple choices, draws, dice roll outcomes, etc, you literally create a new universe for every single possible outcome. In this episode, 7 different timeline universes were created for each outcome (I know there are only 6 sides to a dice. Don't want to spoil how the 7th happens in case anyone who hasn't seen it decides to watch it). 

You are free, you have the ability to make a choice thanks to our GIANT BRAIN
So you might remember this event to make an similar decision easier, or to not take the same decision again.

Yes, each action has a set outcome. If I hit the pool ball this way when the table is set that way, there is only one possible result. The bigger debate is if people are also pool balls, and if we are determined to make certain actions. Free will vs. Determinism.

There are some short-range/long-range things you're talking about here.  If I go swimming at the YMCA and I take swim trunks but no basketball shoes, I limit my abilities with that action.  If I go on vacation and I don't take a certain amount of money, I have different limitations.

You can micro-analyze any decision and see how it affects your future outcomes.  The small stuff limits you to a minimal number of outcomes.  Big picture decisions obviously increase what you can do.  If you're in the city of Chicago because you decide to drive or fly there, you have a ton of options for food.  If you walk into a specific restaurant, you limit the options.

As for pre-determination: I don't buy it.  We all get to pick what we're doing and we decide what happens.  We control our fate and anyone who says we don't is looking for an excuse to be a failure.  They don't want to accept responsibility.  Life is a series of decisions that guides us in a specific path but we can pick and choose as we go.

Think of it like a poker hand.  You get a certain set of cards and you can make changes to improve your odds.  That's life.

while every action DOES have a set outcome, that will vary depending on the variables encompassing it, your own choices do not. you are not guided by some invisible string that forces you to make choices. you r personal choices, are in fact just that. choices. sure, IF you choose to throw that rock, there are an infinite possibility of things that could happen, which will be decided based on the variables such as people near by, how hard you throw it, etc. but the actual choice to throw the rock or not, is yours alone.