On 4/16/2022 8:34 AM, Alan Grayson wrote:
Of course I favour the first version of the argument, using the many-world formulation of collapse, to avoid the "God plays dice" nightmare.Why this fear of true randomness? We have all kinds of classical randomness we just attributed to "historical accident". Would it really make any difference it were due to inherent quantum randomness? Albrect and Phillips have made an argument that there is quantum randomness even nominally classical dynamics. https://arxiv.org/abs/1212.0953v3True randomness implies *unintelligibility*; that is, no existing physical process for *causing *the results of measurements. AG
"It happened at random in accordance with a Poisson process with rate parameter 0.123" seems perfectly intelligible to me. There is a physical description of the system with allows you to predict that, including the value of the rate parameter. It only differs from deterministic physics in that it doesn't say when the event happens.
I always wonder if people who have this dogmatic rejection of randomness understand that quantum randomness is very narrow. Planck's constant is very small and it introduces randomness, but with a definite distribution and on certain variables. It's not "anything can happen" as it seems some people fear.
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