On 09 Dec 2013, at 09:44, LizR wrote:
On 9 December 2013 20:56, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
On 12/8/2013 4:36 PM, LizR wrote:
On 9 December 2013 07:41, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 11:48 AM, Jason Resch <[email protected]>
wrote:
>> Determinism is far from "well established".
> It's a basic assumption in almost every scientific theory.
In the most important theory in physics, Quantum Mechanics, no such
assumption is made, and despite a century of trying no experiment
has ever been performed that even hinted such a deterministic
assumption should be added in.
I believe the two-slit experiment hints that QM is deterministic by
implying the existence of a multiverse.
Wasn't it you, Liz, that pointed out this was circular. Everett
assumes a multiverse in order to make QM determinsitic.
I did say something like that, didn't I? [insert embarrassed
emoticon here].
I think I was saying that it was too strong to say that QM "follows
the principle of determinism" (or something like that) because it
appears to be indeterminate and only becomes deterministic thanks to
Everett. However, the two-slit experiment does suggest the
multiverse as a valid explanation, in that any other explanation
requires other principles to be violated (causality, locality...)
I think I was attempting to position myself between John and Jason -
to say that determinism is reasonably well established,
I am not sure we can establish anything about nature (nor even that it
exists in some ontological) sense. But we can say that up to now, all
our theories are deterministic, which is assuming less than to assume
the existence of something non deterministic, which for me is close to
a fairy tale idea (just looking more serious, but belonging to the
same kind of insanity, to use Einstein's wording).
Obviously, for people believing in both QM and a unique physical
reality (a mono-universe), it looks like there is a 3p indeterminacy,
but computationalist have an easy theory explaining this necessary
indeterministic first person (even plural with QM) appearance.
QM (without collapse) makes going away any 3p indeterminacy, and 3p
non locality. Comp makes this into statistically predictible explained
appearance.
But then comp adds once important thing: the SWE (i.e. QM itself)
*must* be deduced from a larger statistics on all computations.
And "all computations" makes sense through the "miracle" of the Church-
Turing-Post-Kleene thesis.
Once you accept, like John C., that there are events without cause, I
think you believe in magic.
Bruno
but only as a result of a long and winding process of experiment,
conjecture and so on.
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