Lastly, I'm not a believer in free will, so I believe a lot of events are predetermined by our environment, our collective actions, and the generally predictable behavior of humans to do certain things. So that helps remove doubt for me for a set of actions.
I have yet to read this book series, but have you read Isaac Asimov's Foundation?
What you have described here sounds a lot like the fictional idea of psychohistory from these books. Given that your timeline has been generally accurate so far I thought this idea would be interesting to bring up.
Oh, thank god I wasn't the only one thinking of the Foundation series while reading this. Definitely give it a read, TD, judging from your posts in this thread I guarantee you'll love it.
