What awaits me? To Neb, with greetings.
In fact, Neb, I am surprised to see that you even ask such a question.
What awaits me?
There was a guy, his name was Claude Shannon. He wanted to measure ‘surprise’.
He began with a fair coin, tossed it. Got something - either head or tell. He took a dud coin, tossed it, got something. He said, “Ok I am NOT surprised with the second result, but the first result leaves me with more options to be surprised”. He took a third coin, one face heavier than the other. He expected the heavier face to be down, and lighter face to be up, and it happened the other way round. He said, “Well, I am very surprised.”
He decided to give “Surprise” an objective meaning, and he did.
We end up with two expressions from Claude Shannons description: Predicted information, stuff you know before things happen, and Surprise information, stuff you come to know only after the event. Surprise information is essentially deviation (or possibility of deviation) from predicted information.
Without getting into mathematical details, if you know what awaits you before the event, then mathematically it is ‘unfair’, it gives you 0 bits of surprise information. If your event has n possibility of outcome, and you know with an 1/n probability of what is going to happen to you, then you have a fair event.
Life is basically a series of events. If you already know what is beyond the corner, with a probability of 1, then you get a surprise information of 0 - an unfair life.
In case of a fair life, all what you know to await you is ln(n) nats (that’s the unit) of surprise information, if n is the number of choice in hand.
I know this gibberish does not answer your question. It just quantifies the situation you are in (at least in a broad sense) - but there is one more thing, that is —- Do you really want an answer to your question?
Greetings
Sean
PS: I have not seen the life that you have. What I have seen can be summarized in one sentence, that is, — My life always takes a longer path, always through the nodes I am reluctant to arrive, with each known node having a probability of epsilon to be the next one.
