Freethought & Rationalism Archive

tronvillain · 12-12-2002, 04:39 PM

Beoran:

Quote:

Well, yes and no. The uncertainty relationship of heisenberg makes it so that you cannot know the universe with 100% accuracy. Add to that the "butterfly effect", that small causes can have great , and we get utter inpredictability.

No, we get limitations on predictability, but it is not eliminated. We make predictions all the time. Haven't you noticed?

Liquidrage · 12-12-2002, 05:09 PM

We currently cannot know anything with 100% certainty.
But that doesn't mean it's limited. Or that the information isn't there. It just means we can't get that information.
You can read something like Ghost in the Atom or more modern popularized looks at theoretical physics to see that a great many of modern physicists believe the universe to be completely deterministic.

It also must be noted that an assumption of true free will has led to some of the evidence for non-causality.
As Jon Bell writes in Ghost in the Atom

Quote:

John Bell: " You know, one of the ways of understanding this
business is to say that the world is super-deterministic. That
not only is inanimate nature deterministic, but we, the
experimenters who imagine we can choose to do one experiment
rather than another, are also determined. If so, the difficulty
which this experimental result creates disappears."

Heisenberg's Uncertainty

Quote:

What Heisenberg showed was that if two matrices representing different physical properties of a particle, like matrix q for position of the particle and the matrix p for its momentum, had the property that p � q did not equal to q � p, then one could not simultaneously measure both these properties of the particle with high precision or infinite accuracy (zero error). The Heisenberg uncertainty relation asserts that it is impossible to build an apparatus for which the uncertainty so calculated, over a large series of measurements, fail to obey the requirements that the products of measurements, (dq) � (dp) is greater than or equal to the Planck's constant h.

Mathematically: - (dq) � (dp) >= h

Of course, this does not make much sense.
It led Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen to concoct the famous EPR experiment stating that for uncertainty to be true so must non-locality.

Well, thank to Aspect et al most seem to now accept non-locality.

It's an interesting discussion in itself and I would think both sides have some evidence to make their case.

sweep · 12-12-2002, 05:19 PM

Quote:

If a meteor strikes someone on the head, we 'say' they are 'unlucky', but is that what we really mean--that something in their character ifluenced the universe to take action against them?

If that is what you mean when you call someone unlucky then the answer is yes. As to my meaning, if a person coincides with a meteor, they are, in my book, unlucky, due to high improbability of occurence. Luck or lack of, doesn't mean that we have any special connection with the universe, only our universe. Astronauts are lucky, in that they are some of the very few persons to leave our planet. Being born is lucky.

Whether our being is planned only leads me to speculate on the possibility of intelligence and meaning beyond life.

Naked Ape · 12-12-2002, 05:24 PM

I believe that the whole universe is deterministic, but I wouldn�t want to have to jot down THE EQUATION on a damp cocktail napkin with a fountain pen.

Cheers,

Naked Ape

Beoran · 12-14-2002, 03:54 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by tronvillain:
<strong>Beoran:

No, we get limitations on predictability, but it is not eliminated. We make predictions all the time. Haven't you noticed?</strong>

We can't even predict the weather accurately over a timespan than more of a week. After that, it's completely unpredictable. The limits to predictability in complex systems are very high. How could we then try to preict something even more complex, like , say, human behaviour? Even if Heisenberg fails, the evidence for the Butterfly effect is strong. My cardinal point is that due to this effect, it is humanly impossible to transcend those limits on predictability. We humans cannot even get anywhere close to being like the demon of Laplace. So, the future remains clouded, and determinism remains irrelevant.

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12-12-2002, 05:24 PM	#14
Naked Ape Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Winnipeg Posts: 1,780	I believe that the whole universe is deterministic, but I wouldn�t want to have to jot down THE EQUATION on a damp cocktail napkin with a fountain pen. Cheers, Naked Ape

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