To know whether a ball will roll downhill or uphill, — Kenosha Kid
Indeterminism says that some things are predetermined to a degree, but not necessarily everything and not necessarily to a perfect degree. — Olivier5
What is not compelling to me is the story that, if the universe was to magically rewind at the time of the Big Bang and unfold again, every single thing will happen exactly the same as it did the first time around, like when you play the same movie over again — Olivier5
And QM is not a gap. Randomness is systemic in it, and it applies supposedly to the entire universe. — Olivier5
What I mean is that as we measure, say, the spin of a neutron to ever greater precision, the degree of freedom of non-determinism to show its face gets ever smaller. — Kenosha Kid
Ah, but that doesn't mean they weren't selected for. We have an appendix that is useless to us, but we are descended from grass eaters. — Kenosha Kid
It can't be proven. My point was just that you have an extremely simple explanation for consensus -- determinism -- or a really complicated and dubious one. — Kenosha Kid
Exactly, and hence determinism is a rather esoteric idea.Magically rewinding the universe is not. — Kenosha Kid
And likewise, you don't like the idea of randomness and you try to erase it from your POV, when I see it everywhere around me. To each his own metaphysics...you don't like the idea of predetermination so say the universe is random. Fine. But the universe isn't obliged to cater for your taste. — Kenosha Kid
QM is not a gap. Randomness is systemic in it, and it applies supposedly to the entire universe. — Olivier5
Exactly, and hence determinism is a rather esoteric idea. — Olivier5
And likewise, you don't like the idea of randomness and you try to erase it from your POV, when I see it everywhere around me. To each his own metaphysics... — Olivier5
Isn't this a misconception? Not being able to measure position and speed of a particle does not necessarily mean it ain't at an exact position and speed at a given time. — Heiko
That's not where the uncertainty comes from, the way I understand it. The uncertainty is fundamental. Not all values of the system can be known at a time, and the values that are not known can only be expressed as probabilities. — Echarmion
Sure, we can create plausible theories to explain how certain vestigial or otherwise weird anatomies came about. But that doesn't establish that the end result was selected for. Only that there wasn't sufficient pressure to select for a different result. — Echarmion
Meanwhile, your argument, if applied to e.g. the appendix, would lead one to look for the benefits the appendix provides to modern humans to explain its existence. — Echarmion
Why do we need an explanation in the first place? Explanations are tools for specific ends, not an inherent necessity. — Echarmion
I think Kenosha’s point is that despite the above, indeterminism sorta has the burden of proof here, because so far everything that we have been able to know has turned out to behave deterministically, so we should expect that to continue to be the case as the limits of our knowledge push further and further out. If something seems unpredictable at the moment, it’s probably just because of shortcomings on our measurements or theories, not because it’s inherently random. — Pfhorrest
I think we're speaking at cross purposes; — Kenosha Kid
Bear in mind the starting point for this tangent was the claim that life has evolved characteristics that could not have been selected for. That still remains unshown. — Kenosha Kid
???? My argument is that characteristics that benefited our ancestors can be passed down to us whether they benefit us or not. Evolution would not be a deterministic process if organs disappeared the moment they became useless. — Kenosha Kid
Fine, don't seek explanations then. — Kenosha Kid
However we should, in this non-deterministic universe, expect some behaviour that cannot be generalised well. There should be mysteries as to why we cannot predict outcomes. — Kenosha Kid
Determinism is not dependent on being able to rewind the universe. — Kenosha Kid
Now I'm curious, do expound.you don't know my position — Kenosha Kid
It's non local, in particular. Which means you can never isolate any sub-set of events from the rest of the universe in any calculation. This is the Eye Of God hypothesis: One Logos Tying The Whole World In One Very Long And Convoluted, Yet Eternally Predetermined Sentence Which Will Never End Contrary To This One.There is a version of QM called Bohmian mechanics in which particles do have exact position and momentum simultaneously. It is not well liked for other reasons. — Kenosha Kid
I am really just talking about the probabilistic quality of QM, the fact that e.g. at what exact time an atom of a radioactive element decays appears random. — Echarmion
This is presupposing that every attribute we have right now confers a survival advantage. — Echarmion
There'd be nothing mysterious about the unpredictable outcomes. They'd just be things that the natural laws make difficult to predict — Echarmion
But it's dependent on knowing the laws of the universe, which is equally esoteric. — Olivier5
Now I'm curious, do expound. — Olivier5
It's non local, in particular. Which means you can never isolate any sub-set of events from the rest of the universe in any calculation. — Olivier5
So, yes, radioactive decay is an example of a quantum field theory, the electroweak theory. But it isn't characterised by atoms or hadrons either spitting out or not spitting out components at random. The system evolves deterministically through both paths simultaneously, both decaying and not decaying, until the wavefunction collapses/universe branches/superposition decoheres/whatever else happens to yield singular observables. — Kenosha Kid
That doesn't follow. It just needs to have conferred a survival advantage to our ancestors. — Kenosha Kid
What do you mean, difficult to predict? For instance, would it make the vertical component of motion of a ball on an inclined plane difficult to predict? — Kenosha Kid
This argues that nature is fundamentally stochastic. — Kenosha Kid
Stochastic
Having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analysed statistically but may not be predicted precisely.
Well, that's what I'm saying. Nature behaves as if there was some randomness in there... — Olivier5
Double whammy. It wasn't enough one way?determinism forwards and backwards in time. — Kenosha Kid
And the result of all this is that we cannot predict the exact time an individual atom will decay. We can only give probabilities for timeframes, correct? — Echarmion
Traits might also genetically linked, so that a trait that actually does nothing to improve inclusive genetic fitness becomes dominant because it's linked to other traits that do. — Echarmion
We could imagine that the motion is probabilistic, but with such a narrow Amplitude (is that the right word) that the inaccuracies wouldn't matter for everyday purposes. — Echarmion
And they are also used for all sorts of calculations about random events. — Olivier5
Point being you can't read 'stochastic' and infer 'non-deterministic'. — Kenosha Kid
I can do so very easily. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.... Why would I not infer that it's a duck? — Olivier5
I'm not really insisting that, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. I'm just saying that this is the conclusion I will draw, personally, because I see no good reason to assume it's an elephant instead. You on the other hand, when you see that it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you conclude that it ought to be an elephant... That is your call, not mine. That sounds pretty odd to me from an empirical epistemologic perspective but you are entitled to your opinion... — Olivier5
When I see a phenomenon that displays a behavior resembling randomness (eg the Galton box and its results plotted against a Gauss curve), I say it looks like randomness — Olivier5
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