Krim See comments
> [David M] > Cause is the wrong word and not the point I am trying to make. > Future event is also the wrong concept, as events are actual and present > and I'd not suggest any future pre-existence. > > Rather I am pointing out that in processes that have tendencies of outcome > rather than certainties of outcome, there is implied in such a process a > set > of possible states, only one of which will become actual, and therefore > what > becomes actual is limited by the possibilities available. Beyond these lie > the impossible, but within what is possible a choice has to be made, it is > called the collapse of the wave function by physicists, where as Dirac > says 'nature makes a choice', at the human level we just say we make our > existential > choice. > > [Krimel] > Sometimes I thing you and I are grappling with the same concepts, we just > can not agree on the vocabulary to capture them. History does tend to have > some kind of inertia. So for example we have confidence that the sun will > rise. But tomorrow's sunrise is not a factor in allowing us to conclude > that > it will happen. It is the string of past sunrises that gives us confidence > in tomorrow. We have confidence in the occurrence of future events because > of their consistence in the past. It is the past that lets us construct > the > future. DM: Yes, but I hope to improve your concepts as they are too narrow for my liking. > > As for Dirac's quote, don't you think that many of these quotes from > physicist are often given in an attempt to simplify their subject for > general consumption? I mean I love them too and am fond of quoting them > but > aren't they often constructed so as to sacrifice clarity for truth? > DM: No because I am borrowing this quote & idea from the physicist Shimon Malin who knew Dirac. moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
