Oxymoron

All this talk of Quantum Mechanics is fun, but it is a misdirection IMHO. Roger Penrose (and others) have postulated "Quantum Microtubules" in the brain that allegedly decouple brains from being determinstic. It's highly controversial and I have to say it sounds a bit shash.

Brains may well be deterministic. They are also very complex. In order to hide the fixed nature of existence from a conscious being, it might only be necessary that the processes be sufficiently complex, entangled, error-prone and non-linear, and nothing is going to pick any sense out of it whatsoever. Add to that the fact that we're coupled to a genetic survival machine that is pushing and pulling us in many directions 24/7/52, and we've got the illusion of Free Will.

That's just brains. The software they run - minds - is highly non-linear and highly parallelised with either no or weak synchronisation between system. In these situations, minute differences in process timing can yield utterly different results (just like dynamical systems), effectively impairing the ability to run two identical sequences to check if the results are the same (a key requirement of determinism). Also, bear in mind (pardon the pun) that you can do just about anything in software. Since the world we perceive is a VR sim between our ears, our software can add, remove or modify any element of that simulation without our say so.

So there is the illusion of Free Will plus there is the practical inability to pin down a deterministic system in terms of hardware OR software. We are actually neither free NOR deterministic, we are just very very complicated.

(edited to remove spurious words that were fated to be there by Jehovah in order to confuse you all).

[ December 17, 2002: Message edited by: Oxymoron ]</p>

Starboy

Oxymoron, it appears to boil down to what is a "will"?

Starboy

[ December 17, 2002: Message edited by: Starboy ]</p>

Oxymoron

A concept which cannot be usefully defined? There's a dustbin waiting for it in the corner, I brought it in specially

No doubt philosophers will balk at such pragmatism. Then again, they invent so many concepts which they cannot unambiguously define or whose definition fails to keep up with Current Thinking, so they are their own worst enemy (ducks for cover again).

Kharakov

Multiple events can be described with a probability distribution, however, when you get the same probability distribution again and again (plug the same values into Schrodingers equation, see what you get) it is not truly random, is it?. Are you postulating that truly random events always fall into the exact same ordered distribution of probability? lol

If aggregate results (from apparently equivalent initial conditions) were not skewed the same way every time we measure them, I would not be inclined to see an overall order.

Sigh. Resorting to ad hominem. You can't successfully defend your position, can you?

Starboy

Kharakov, consider the possibility that it is friendly advice.

Starboy

Oxymoron

Um, please don't take offence, but you neither seem to understand probability or what the Schroedinger equation actually describes. I would happily lecture you on both these topics, but (a) it would bore II rigid, and (b) you'll learn it a whole lot better from a good book than I can teach it off the top of my head.

Good luck!

PotatoError

Starboy, You are saying that because certain quantum equations produce probabilities of a certain event happening, those events are therefore random.

You seem to insist that any systems which appear random ARE random.

So what about artificially created chaos systems which seem totally random but turn out to be determined?

I tell someone I have two balls, a green one and a blue one. I have hidden the blue one behind my back.

I ask the person whether I have the blue ball behind my back. They will rightly say "there's a 50% chance you do".

but that doesn't mean it's random! It doesn't mean that the ball could turn out to be green does it?
Just because people use probabilities doesn't mean an event is random.

Starboy

Yes PotatoError, there is always the possiblity that scientists do not know what they are talking about, but that doesn't change the situation. The current working hypothesis is that behaviour at the plank scale is based on distributions of random events. Current experimental evidence supports this claim. Until new information comes to light or an explanation is concocted that can be suppored by experiment on nature that removes the randomness, we have to go with what we currently know. Science doesn't prove things, it provides objective observations and testable explanations. The current crop of scientific explanations assume random behavior at the plank scale. The current collection of objective data supports this claim.

Starboy

Oxymoron

You have it the wrong way around. When a system is random, the only information you can obtain is probabilistic.

By random, we mean 'any outcome has non-zero probability and is not determined by history.' Here's a specific example: a discrete random variable N is said to have a Poisson Distribution (with parameter p) if

Prob(N=k) = exp(-p)*p^k / k!

for some value k. It is categorically not the case that if a variable is random it has a 'flat' (all outcomes equal) probability distribution, as I think you (and Kharakov) are suggesting.

(edited to fix the maths).

[ December 17, 2002: Message edited by: Oxymoron ]</p>

Starboy

Oxymoron, it has been a long time since I did any QM, but in my day I was very good at it. This is a boast, but I have been in classes and colloquia given by Dirac.

Starboy

[ December 17, 2002: Message edited by: Starboy ]</p>