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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (14593)	1/17/2003 6:21:45 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

<<Does the fact that something can't be precisely measured automatically mean that its not determined? >> Perhaps there is a different way for you to look it that is more familiar and intuitive to you... when you throw a pot, no matter how accurately you did it, no matter how accurate the proportions, no matter how carefully you cool it, it is not deterministic if it cracks or not from any *a priori* measurements anyone can make. It doesn't have to do with not measuring accurately. That is what the uncertainty principle means - there are tons of experiments that prove it - ones where all the components can be weighed absolutely - heck, we can move one atom at a time, but despite that, you simply can't predict how it will turn out with 100% certainty. Radioactive decay is a really good example. Or rolling a die. You simply can't make a machine that will drop a die from a reasonable height, with rotation, and have it generate a 100% predictable outcome. Or a pachinko machine. You could stack all the ball bearings in exactly the same order, each perfectly round, but when you opened the gate, they simply won't act the same way the each time. There would be general trends in all of these examples. Things would *tend* to do certain things, but would never do it EXACTLY the same way.

To: Greg or e who wrote (14593)	1/17/2003 8:40:33 PM
From: TigerPaw	Respond to of 28931

Good points all! A little leaven leavens the whole loaf, does it not? If there is any uncertainty (randomness) then why doesn't that change things way all down the line? Yes, if effect = cause + some factor times random then things are differnet all the way down the line. The larger the factor the quicker things get different. It can and has been measured as to how fast things get random. (Planck's constant). Determininism means the factor is zero. Does the fact that something can't be precisely measured automatically mean that its not determined? No, uncertainty is the principal that measuring something will change the thing that is measured. This puts a lower limit on measurement but doesn't absolutely say anything about whether it was deterministic or not.If the observer has some effect on the observed, I can see why that is problematic for measurement but I don't follow how that makes it non determined. By itself, it doesn't. Perhaps it was pre determined that we try to observe in the first place. Without some randomness, then everything is predetermined. If one could get outside the system of space and time would that make a difference? I never could completely wrap my mind around that concept. I tend to think that randomness is the nature of not only our universe but of any "higher" order universe. The reason is that there is only one way to be deterministic, but an infinite number of ways to be random. I don't think our universe is infinite, but it definitly contains infinities, such as the number of digits in the square root of two. TP