On 4/12/2013 7:06 PM, Colin Geoffrey Hales 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?
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.
That's true but in a trivial way. Whatever theory is taken to be fundamental doesn't have
an explanation. If it did it wouldn't be fundamental.
Brent
Anyway you all heard this stuff from me before....
Cheers
Colin
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