Principia

Why, yguy, thank you for asking. I think I have about the same opinion of you as most of the people here... Well, ok, maybe a little less than that.
I see. So it is all about what you see. How close-minded.

yguy

I take this to mean that responding to what I actually said rather than your misinterpretation of what I said is too much to ask.

End of conversation.

Principia

I can't say that your request makes much sense when you yourself have such a low of opinion of what you say. Here, let me repeat your pitiful whining to me just a couple of posts ago: Is that why you are here, yguy? To get people to care about what you think? You are a Xian, right? Hasn't your God taught you anything about getting the attention of others?

Doubting Didymus

Hey! Tone it the fuck down, both of you. If you can't play nice, ignore each other.

S2Focus

Heh Heh.... Casinos in Las Vegas make lots of money from folks like you thanks to business models based on probability....

Gamblers and creationists are very similar in that they are gullible and have a poor understanding of probability and statistics...

Kimpatsu

99% of statistics are made up on the spot, anyway.

Craig

Ok, you are either a troll or you just have absolutely NO idea what you are talking about. The probability is what makes quantum theory work. Traditional theories DO NOT WORK in many areas.

I suggest you do some reading on quantum electrodynamics (QED) and see exactly what it is that you are trying to debate because it is clear that you are completely off with your assesment of exactly what it is.

liquid

yguy, I think the confusion you are operating under with regard to QM isn't unusual.

You have only encountered probabilities of statistical descriptions of samples of deterministic events. In other words, the only place you have seen probabilities used is to count things like coin flips.

QM is not the same sort of thing. I don't have the time to get technical, because I am shortly going on a flight. Remember this - Probabilities are the fundamental basis of QM, not a description of an underlying determinism. That's a big distinction - with an underlying determinism, you could sufficiently control variables to lead to expected outcomes; that simply doesn't work with QM.

Now, because these probablistic effects wash out at any scale we are remotely familiar with, we can't really visualise them clearly, in a similar way to relativity on the large scale.

An analogous situation is wave-particle duality for light photons. I have seen many many people struggle to understand how photons can be both a wave and a particle. The answer is that it isn't. A photon is a photon, it just happens to behave exactly like our particle model at times and a wave model at others. But the common presentation of the theory leads often to confusion for people who makes physics too difficult for themselves. Remember that all physical theories are models, not the actual reality itself.

Models are verified by their ability to predict reality. Quantum mechanics is generally regarded as having the closest agreement with reality of any physical theory so far. By the very nature of science, that makes it one of the most valid, despite its often confusing probablistic nature.

The universe does not have to conform to your expectations of how it should operate. If it 'wants' to behave in a probablistic manner at small scales, then it will do so regardless of how dodgy you may think that is.

yguy

Craig and liquid, I'll answer you here today or tomorrow:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=51934

Dr Rick

I acknowledge that I don't know what you mean; UNacknowledged by whom? Whom do you know that is not acknowledging whatever it is you know should be acknowledged, and how can we know how it is to be acknowledged? We lack the knowledge to know what you want acknowledged without you acknowledging what we need to know.

Rick