I was following along with you up to this point, Paul. You pretty fairly replicated my thought process up to my mid-30s, including dismissing quantum physics as operating on a scale that doesn't impact us.

Then I read Gleick's Chaos. And then, as they say, the sh*t got weird.

Chaos (complexity) theory says that a deterministic universe applies... up to a point. But certain conditions cause non-deterministic (and seemling chaotic) results; and worse, it's impossible to measure those conditions with enough precision to predict non-deterministic results, unless you have measurements on such a small scale that you are pushing the quantum envelope, and "the sh*t gets weird" doesn't even begin to describe what's happening.

So sure, most of the time, mostly, things are more or less predictable. Mostly. But every so often, it won't be. All I can do at that point is say, "Yeah, well, the universe, it does that." And shrug.