On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 4:06 AM, Colin Geoffrey Hales <[email protected]> wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou > Sent: Friday, 12 April 2013 11:30 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Why do particles decay randomly? > > On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 5:35 AM, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> On Thursday, April 11, 2013 3:29:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: >>> >>> On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> > If matter is deterministic, how could it behave in a random way? >>> >>> >>> It couldn't. >> >> >> Are you saying then that matter is random, or that it is neither >> random nor deterministic? > > Matter behaves randomly, but probability theory allows us to make predictions > about random events. > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > > ------------------------------------------ > > Yeah, what Stathis said. I can add that in cellular automata totally > deterministic rules give rise to randomness. Maybe Read Wolfram's stuff?
No deterministic CA can give rise to randomness, only complexity. Rule 110, for example, can be used as a pseudo-random number generator, but this is not randomness in the "which slit is the photon going to go through" sense, because it is always possible to predict a future state based on the current state given enough computational power. With true randomness, there is no such possible computation. > > And .... > > 'Matter', the word, the concept, is grounded in (presupposes) a scientific > observer that dreamt up the regularity called 'quantum mechanics'. QM > supplies nothing about the real nature (the actual building blocks) of > reality. It merely supplies how it appears, to us, inside the system being > described, observing it from within, built of the same stuff. E.g. I can > claim there's no such thing as 'atoms' and be 100% right, because that > concept is actually "the natural world behaves atom-ly when we look at it, in > circumstances where its atom-like behaviour results". With QM get to be > predictive. We get no explanation of why it is that way. Same in everything > else, BTW. Not just QM. > > Anyway you all heard this stuff from me before.... > > Cheers > Colin > > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
