Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id IAA24758 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 25 Jan 2002 08:31:04 GMT Message-ID: <000801c1a582$1080e9e0$5e2ffea9@oemcomputer> From: "Philip Jonkers" <philipjonkers@prodigy.net> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <3C50149D.29697.482E4B@localhost> Subject: Re: The Barren Desolate Wasteland of Superdeterminism Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 00:24:16 -0900 Organization: Prodigy Internet Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Me:
> > Everything consists of
> > particles which all obey quantum equations of motion, so everything
> > possesses an intrinsic indeterministic seed.
Salice:
> I never really buyed the quantum mechanics idea, i think the
> pseudo-indeterministic observations just result from the current
> inability to measure it right cause we lack the tools and knowledge.
>
> Einstein said something like "God doesn't dice" but even if God
> DOES dice there are still physical rules which define what the
> outcome of the game will be. I think true randomness does not
> exists, it is rather an illusion like free will for instance.
I hope my German is good enough but he is known to have said:
`Der Herrgott wuerfult nicht' (god doesn't throw dice...). According to
one of my physics professors Einstein, although being one of the instigators
of quantum theory (he was awarded a nobel prize for his work on brownian
motion and the photo-electric effect), he was in fact notoriously bad in
quantum mechanics. Story has it that whenever the major physics chiefs in
England had some problem they couln't surmount at that time they jokingly
exclamated: `Let's ask the idiot...' (referring to Einstein, of course).
In other words, Einstein wasn't too much of a fan of QM too and he
was incredibly resourceful in coming up with all kinds of
gedanken-experimenten
designed to overthrow QM by demonstrating its intrinsic incompleteness.
Although truly inventive they never managed to do just that, in fact every
test gave results in harmony with QM predictions.
QM has stood the tooth of time for too long to discard it by arguments
of a hand-waving, religious or down-right emotional flavor. Nature seems to
be intrinsically indeterministic at small enough scales. Einstein, being one
of
the last of the scholars of the classical school of physical thought,
couldn't
get used to that and a lot still can't, including you apparantly.
Granted, it is not easy to acquire QM intuition as the world around us is
convincingly classical. You will have to actually study QM to try to
accomplish that.
On the randomness thing: true randomness really does exist. They come in
the practical guise of random number generators based on atomic decay.
Philip.
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