On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 12:57 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 12/9/2013 12:44 AM, 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, but only as a result > of a long and winding process of experiment, conjecture and so on. > > > > But it isn't. As Roland Omnes says, quantum mechanics is a probabilistic > theory so it predicts probabilities - what did you expect? Among apostles > of Everett there's a lot of trashing of Copenhagen. But Bohr's idea was > that the classical world, where things happened and results were recorded, > was *logically* prior to the quantum mechanics. QM was a way of making > predictions about what could done and observed. Today what might be termed > neo-Copenhagen is advocated by Chris Fuchs and maybe Scott Aronson. I > highly recommend Scott's book "Quantum Computing Since Democritus". It's > kind of heavy going in the middle, but if you're just interested in the > philosophical implications you can skip to the last chapters. Violation of > Bell's inequality can be used to guarantee the randomness of numbers, > http://arxiv.org/pdf/0911.3427v3.pdf, assuming only locality. > > > Bell's theorm proves that local hidden variables are impossible which leaves only two remaining explanations that explain the EPR paradox: 1. Non-local, faster-than-light, relativity violating effects 2. Measurements have more than one outcome In light of Bell's theorem, either special relativity is false or many-world's is true. Jason -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
