Determinism Is Self Defeating

[bennyboy]

Given access to only 1 timeframe, and therefore no way to repeat the state of any system exactly, how WOULD you disprove the "hypothesis" of determinism?

All you have to do is remove the divider and observe water -not- seeking it's own level like it did all the other times.

That's a pretty crude, statistical kind of determinism. The real question is would every little ripple and droplet, even in a massive flood event, have to turn out exactly as it does? Or is there wiggle room on local levels that seem deterministic on larger levels because of the massive statistical certainty of large populations?

To humanize it, it's statistically definite that there will be about X road-rage killings this year. But that certainly doesn't mean (at least to me) that any particular killer was destined to do it.