What effects do uncaused quantum events have on the macro-scale world? You'd think that all those "tiny divergences from initial conditions will add up over time to great divergences" would be observable at the macro scale, but what we observe is consistent - similar causes lead to similar events. — Harry Hindu
Yes; but then you are going back to quantum phenomena to produce randomness.
What we in the article though is indeterminism in a classical system without reliance on quantum phenomena.
The salient point is that determinism is not found in classical physics but assumed. The article goes some way to showing that the assumption might be removed without cost.
If that is the case it is a point worth making, especialy given the number of threads involving causal chains hereabouts:
turkeyMan's Evolution & Growing Awareness
@substantivalism's Infinite casual chains and the beginning of time?
@PhilosophyNewbie's Kalam cosmological argument
@Pippen's Refutation of a creatio ex nihilo
@Samuel Lacrampe's Simple Argument for the Soul from Free Will
@Benj96's Why does the universe have rules?
Much hinges here. We ought be clear about it. — Banno
Wrote a post trying to explain some chaos concepts a while ago. Since you're a meteorologist I'd guess you probably already know it and are making a point regarding chaos being a buzzword most of the time, but just in case — fdrake
Sure, and we also have evidence that suggests determinism. How do we determine which is the case.Might be more accurate to say that evidence suggests nondeterminism? — jorndoe
Exactly. Hence my point that QM and classical physics need to be unified - kind of like how genetics and the theory of evolution by natural selection are unified micro and macro theories that support each other, not contradict each other like QM and classic physics. The glue to unify them, IMO, would be a proper theory of consciousness.The world is one; it's not neatly divided into micro and macro scales. E.g. radioactivity, a quantic phenomenon, is an important cause of genetic mutations, which are an important driver of evolution. — Olivier5
Gravity is part of the system we are talking about, not beyond it. And there are theories of quantum gravity, which seems to indicate that there is randomness in the force and possibly the direction of gravity, so why do we see the the balls in the box fall into predictable patterns at the bottom rather than fill all corners and sides of the box?Divergences would be expected to be within, not beyond, global constraints such as gravity. — Janus
You seem to be confusing you not knowing something is the case with indeterminism.On the macro scale things proceed more or less as we expect. Water always seems to erode the land, for example, but we have no way of knowing what effect random quantum events might have on the precise courses of erosion. — Janus
It is just as groundless to say that it wouldn't happen the same again, so you need to come up with a better argument that doesn't focus on using our ignorance as evidence that indeterminism is true.It is a groundless assumption that, given exactly the same initial conditions, a flow of water would produce exactly the same erosion patterns, down to the micro-physical level, over and over again if we were able to "rerun" it. I say it is groundless because there is no possible way to confirm it. — Janus
Sure, and we also have evidence that suggests determinism. How do we determine which is the case. — Harry Hindu
If information simply went back in time at all, it would be a "resulting" physical state that is also a "prior" physical state, but being a physical state in at least a Newtonian sort of sense, it should have some effect on the resulting physical state which could lead to a different result. You wouldn't need an intelligence to cause the conflict. Something akin to this is behind the Chronology Protection Conjecture.if you could send information back in time (backward causation) to show someone their future, their foreknowledge of that future would then change their behavior and so also change what their future ends up actually being. — Pfhorrest
Suppose instead of a person, it's just a computer program competing in a "tournament" of sorts. A program may be coded, say, to run Monte Carlo simulations of other programs to affect its odds of winning the tournament. In such a way we can abstract out the intelligence and the person. (Incidentally I've competed in such tourneys before... it's fun). But this isn't changing any program's behavior; it's simply coding what the behavior is. And the result isn't necessarily chaotic just because your program is playing by these rules. Does that make sense?Likewise, if that person merely predicts their own future in an ordinary way (or just hears such a prediction), those expectations about the future will change their behavior and so make their actual future vary from the predictions. — Pfhorrest
It's a bit tough to talk about since in my mind the specs are a bit fuzzy.You say that in that case the result isn't necessarily chaotic. That's what I'd like more information on, because it seems intuitively like it must be chaotic, — Pfhorrest
It is just as groundless to say that it wouldn't happen the same again, so you need to come up with a better argument that doesn't focus on using our ignorance as evidence that indeterminism is true. — Harry Hindu
How does “due to error we can never predict the position of the balls” lead to “the notion that the universe is determined fails”? I would agree that the notion that we can predict the universe fails, but those aren’t the same thing. Not that I agree with the notion that it’s deterministic. — khaled
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