Actually, the butterfly flap thing is not really good either.
In chaos, things do not cause other things. The system is
essentially noncausal.
This is a trick point. But if a system depends unstably
on its initial state, it makes no real sense to say that it
depends on its initial state at all in any detail.
The weather has large scale stable aspects--it is almost always warmer in
the summer than in the winter for example. But the details of the weather
are(it is currently believed) unstable. They are not really caused by
anything in any reasonable sense.
This is in fact not completely detached from quantum uncertainty
because if a system is unstable then it can obviously be knocked about
by quantum level changes--since it can be knocked about by arbitrarily
small changes of any sort. One merges into the other.
Also, there is no reason at all why a quantum uncertainty cannot
have macro effects, cf. Schrodinger's cat and many other examples.
Time for work. More on this later(if anyone cares)
Robert
On Thu, 28 Apr 2011, Martin Leese wrote:
Helmut Oellers <oell...@syntheticwave.de> wrote:
2011/4/26 Dave Malham <d...@york.ac.uk>
On 24/04/2011 19:11, Helmut Oellers wrote:
...modern computers are also clever. Today nothing is unaccountable if we
know the formula and all variables.
That's a BIG assumption - and given the essentially chaotic (in the
mathematical sense) nature of the Universe, wrong. We are now pretty certain
that nothing is that predictable and that that idea's basically (old)
Science Fiction - we have moved from E. E. "Doc" Smith's "Lensman" universe
( where ultimately intelligent beings could predict everything because they
knew the complete starting conditions and laws of the Universe) to the
Discworld universe of Terry Pratchett where one flap of a Quantum Weather
Butterfly's *** wings can change the course of the entire Universe (and
confound even the Gods).
Hello Dave,
what you are describing, I would consider as the ?Heisenberg uncertainty
principle?, which disclosures, as closer we look at the things, as less we
can discover. Accordingly, in the quantum world the random exist, really
not computable. However, in the macro world of whole air molecules, the
conditions are describable.
No, not the Heisenberg uncertainty principle
just, as Dave stated, chaos. At times, the
weather system gets itself into a chaotic state.
The motion of the planets is also thought to be
chaotic. These are macro.
This example of the weather system gave rise
to the (unsubstantiated) claim that the flap of a
butterfly?s wings in Brazil can set off a tornado
in Texas. (The location of the butterfly and its
effects vary.) This very nice example was then
purloined and mangled by Terry Prachett who
introduced a spurious reference to Quantum
Theory.
Regards,
Martin
--
Martin J Leese
E-mail: martin.leese stanfordalumni.org
Web: http://members.tripod.com/martin_leese/
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