determinism

[William Flynn Wallace]

There has to be at least some determinism.  Free Will, whatever it may be, cannot prevent the environment from making changes in us, like solar rays causing a mutation in us, or some toxin giving us cancer.  These things can also affect us mentally - some toxins will lower IQ or make us depressed.  Free will can come in in our choices as to what toxins to expose ourselves to, such as staying inside and wearing SPF of 50 when we go out.  Some are unavoidable.  bill w

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Sat, 17 Jul 2021 at 06:30, William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

There has to be at least some determinism.  Free Will, whatever it may be, cannot prevent the environment from making changes in us, like solar rays causing a mutation in us, or some toxin giving us cancer.  These things can also affect us mentally - some toxins will lower IQ or make us depressed.  Free will can come in in our choices as to what toxins to expose ourselves to, such as staying inside and wearing SPF of 50 when we go out.  Some are unavoidable.  bill w

Determinism is not exclusive of psychological factors. If your actions were undetermined, it would mean that they could be determined by your preferences, values, knowledge of the world and so on. You would behave in a chaotic and purposeless way and would be unable to function or survive. This is an absurd way to define free will, which is why most philosophers reject it.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[William Flynn Wallace]

they could be determined by your preferences, values, knowledge of the world and so on. You would behave in a chaotic and purposeless way   I think that's a big non sequitur.  If my behaviors and thoughts were determined by my values, etc.  It would be chaos?  My values lead to no purpose?  Doesn't make any sense to me.   bill w

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypVz-J%2BaqF8%3D76aG6YjgnOuzH9oahex-GuYHPUBQcA%2Bwxw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Sun, 18 Jul 2021 at 00:04, William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

they could be determined by your preferences, values, knowledge of the world and so on. You would behave in a chaotic and purposeless way   I think that's a big non sequitur.  If my behaviors and thoughts were determined by my values, etc.  It would be chaos?  My values lead to no purpose?  Doesn't make any sense to me.   bill w

Sorry, there was a typo in my original reply. Libertarian free will requires that your actions be undetermined, but if your actions were undetermined they could NOT be determined by any psychological factors such as your preferences, values, knowledge of the world and so on. So this is a bad definition of free will: fortunately no-one has it, no-one thinks they have it, and no-one wants to have it. People who say that they believe they have it usually don’t understand the meaning of the words they are using, such as “undetermined”.

On Fri, Jul 16, 2021 at 9:39 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, 17 Jul 2021 at 06:30, William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

There has to be at least some determinism.  Free Will, whatever it may be, cannot prevent the environment from making changes in us, like solar rays causing a mutation in us, or some toxin giving us cancer.  These things can also affect us mentally - some toxins will lower IQ or make us depressed.  Free will can come in in our choices as to what toxins to expose ourselves to, such as staying inside and wearing SPF of 50 when we go out.  Some are unavoidable.  bill w

Determinism is not exclusive of psychological factors. If your actions were undetermined, it would mean that they could be determined by your preferences, values, knowledge of the world and so on. You would behave in a chaotic and purposeless way and would be unable to function or survive. This is an absurd way to define free will, which is why most philosophers reject it.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypVz-J%2BaqF8%3D76aG6YjgnOuzH9oahex-GuYHPUBQcA%2Bwxw%40mail.gmail.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAO%2BxQEYZPzTyg8esQ5E6xZffr66KeHysV1eBXBi9X5s5rJ3ggQ%40mail.gmail.com.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[SR Ballard]

Determined means you have no choice. It’s a foregone conclusion. That’s not a choice at all if it was impossible for you to pick something different. 

SR Ballard

On Jul 17, 2021, at 7:22 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypWbOg-mwhwJCKfoRsimuG6ZGe5UxXOaqig6UVDfyZKT9Q%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Sun, 18 Jul 2021 at 11:32, SR Ballard <sen....@gmail.com> wrote:

Determined means you have no choice. It’s a foregone conclusion. That’s not a choice at all if it was impossible for you to pick something different. 

A free choice is one that is determined by what you want to do. A forced choice is one that is determined by someone coercing you. An undetermined choice is one that is not determined by anything: it happens randomly, and you have no control over it - because if you did, it would be determined by what you want to do.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/147191BF-EB09-4FDB-8468-C8C82F79A822%40gmail.com.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[William Flynn Wallace]

Your unconscious mind alerts you to the fact that you could really use some ice cream right now, so you get up and get it.  You do have a choice as to whether you will get up and get it.  If you do, you can say that your impulse caused your fetching the dessert - your hunger for that determined your actions.  And involved a choice.  This is internal.  If you put something away in the freezer and your eye hits the ice cream, you may grab it and take it with you.  Not the determining factor is external but you still had a choice.  

Now take Pavlov's dog:  after conditioning the dog salivates to the bell.  It has no choice.  The dog and us cannot control our autonomic nervous systems.  Here determinism is beyond our control - no choice.  bill w

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/147191BF-EB09-4FDB-8468-C8C82F79A822%40gmail.com.

[William Flynn Wallace]

see my other post of a few minutes ago.  the bell determined the salivating and the dog had no choice   bill w

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypVWoN7DEPY2%3DUob5mC66qr%3DTxP10A9bAiUkPL8%2B5EvgzA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Sun, 18 Jul 2021 at 11:53, William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

Your unconscious mind alerts you to the fact that you could really use some ice cream right now, so you get up and get it.  You do have a choice as to whether you will get up and get it.  If you do, you can say that your impulse caused your fetching the dessert - your hunger for that determined your actions.  And involved a choice.  This is internal.  If you put something away in the freezer and your eye hits the ice cream, you may grab it and take it with you.  Not the determining factor is external but you still had a choice.  

Now take Pavlov's dog:  after conditioning the dog salivates to the bell.  It has no choice.  The dog and us cannot control our autonomic nervous systems.  Here determinism is beyond our control - no choice.  bill w

Yes, but the error is in saying that you don’t have a free choice if the choice is determined. All choices are determined, but some choices are determined by reflexes or by someone holding a gun to your head, and those are not free, while other choices are determined by what you want to do, and those are free.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAO%2BxQEYTDmMU0nxqNC916yYAmboOmzRXYKbpoGvmNRfAYAtNpw%40mail.gmail.com.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[SR Ballard]

So they’re determined except that they aren’t. That’s not very clear. If they’re determined, like Pavlov’s dog, we only have the illusion of choice. 

If by “determined”, you mean influenced, then sure, I’d say that free will and determinism are compatible. Otherwise I think it’s a bucket of hogwash. 

If people really can’t ever control their actions, we need to radically change society, but we can’t, because everything is inevitable. Or maybe we will, because it’s inevitable. 

SR Ballard

On Jul 17, 2021, at 10:00 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypXqB-CenEAFS_Ovne3BeSjrxDr%2BAjibOVXYfQ9T60zOKA%40mail.gmail.com.

[William Flynn Wallace]

I agree    bill w

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypXqB-CenEAFS_Ovne3BeSjrxDr%2BAjibOVXYfQ9T60zOKA%40mail.gmail.com.

[William Flynn Wallace]

In some jury trials a judge can decide to split the cause:  like the company was 60% responsible and the person was 40% responsible.  That's splitting the determining factors.   bill w

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CCF5E2A9-9601-45E8-9C96-5731AA9DC140%40gmail.com.

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jul 17, 2021 at 9:53 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Your unconscious mind alerts you to the fact that you could really use some ice cream right now, so you get up and get it.  You do have a choice as to whether you will get up and get it.  If you do, you can say that your impulse caused your fetching the dessert - your hunger for that determined your actions.  And involved a choice.  This is internal. 

OK, and a mechanical cuckoo "chooses" to come out of his clock and announce the time every hour. This is internal and deterministic.  And an atom "chooses" to emit a photon of light when it is hit by an electron. This is external and deterministic. And the nucleus of a Uranium 238 atom "chooses" to emit an alpha particle and turn into the nucleus of Thorium 234. This is internal and random. But I don't see what any of this has to do with "free will", in fact I don't see what ANYTHING has to do with "free will".  

> If you put something away in the freezer and your eye hits the ice cream, you may grab it and take it with you.  Not the determining factor is external but you still had a choice.  

But at the end of the day you still made a "choice", and out of all the things you could've eaten in the refrigerator you "chose" ice cream and not celery. Why? There are only two possibilities, you made that "choice" for a reason, in which case it was determined, or you did NOT make that "choice" for a reason, in which case it was random. So you're either a cuckoo clock or a roulette wheel, make your "choice".  

John K Clark

 

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Sun, 18 Jul 2021 at 23:39, SR Ballard <sen....@gmail.com> wrote:

So they’re determined except that they aren’t. That’s not very clear. If they’re determined, like Pavlov’s dog, we only have the illusion of choice. 

If by “determined”, you mean influenced, then sure, I’d say that free will and determinism are compatible. Otherwise I think it’s a bucket of hogwash. 

If people really can’t ever control their actions, we need to radically change society, but we can’t, because everything is inevitable. Or maybe we will, because it’s inevitable.

You can't control your actions UNLESS they are determined. An undetermined action is one that is truly random, and you can't control a truly random event. The best you can hope for is that undetermined events occur infrequently or only when the outcome doesn't matter, such as choosing ice cream, when the worst that can happen is that you get a flavour you don't like.

[William Flynn Wallace]

Just what is an 'undetermined' event'?  bill w

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypX-ppfbwyrS3Ym1cFmGZ2XpX_twoiuaTNSqLsjJHGQAhQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 10:09 AM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Just what is an 'undetermined' event'?  bill w

An event without a cause, aka a random event, for example the decay of a Uranium nucleus. 

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

I am not a physicist but I don't think this is possible.  Things appear random because we don't know the cause.   There has to be a reason why one particle gets released and another one doesn't.  But don't ask me!  

Take lightning:  not random.  It strikes there (actually probably goes up from there) because there is the greatest buildup of forces.  bill w

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAJPayv3MA_k%2BD5hCeJw67ONmH9SJGW9hVrz814U0fZpxkpkwgA%40mail.gmail.com.

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 10:54 AM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Just what is an 'undetermined' event'?  bill w

 

An event without a cause, aka a random event, for example the decay of a Uranium nucleus. 

> I am not a physicist but I don't think this is possible.  Things appear random because we don't know the cause.   

Before about 1926 almost all physicists would have agreed with you, but time marches on and today virtually none of them would. 

> There has to be a reason why one particle gets released and another one doesn't.  

Why? I am aware of no law of logic that demands every event have a cause.

John K Clark

[SR Ballard]

You can’t control your actions IF they are determined. If actions are simple cause and effect (determined), then there is no choice, only the illusion of choice. 

If you don’t mean “determined” as in “actually determines”, then picking the word determined was a huge fuckup back in the day by whoever decided that was the way to talk about it.

If actions are determined, then there’s no such thing as guilt — just like truly random actions, there was no choice, so no guilt. 

SR Ballard

On Jul 18, 2021, at 8:25 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:



--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypX-ppfbwyrS3Ym1cFmGZ2XpX_twoiuaTNSqLsjJHGQAhQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 11:50 AM SR Ballard <sen....@gmail.com> wrote:

> You can’t control your actions IF they are determined.

True, and you can't control your actions if things are NOT determined either, in fact nothing can because if they were not determined then your actions would have no cause.  

> If actions are determined, then there’s no such thing as guilt

Nonsense. If things are determined you could feel guilty if you are determined to feel guilty, and even if you're not determined to feel guilty you might feel that way anyway for no reason at all. 

John K Clark

[SR Ballard]

What I’m saying and you just refuse to hear is that you “feeling” guilt would be immaterial. There is no actual guilt, because there’s no control, only the illusion of control. 

No one is stupid or not, just robotically responding to stimuli. We can’t worry about “barbarian” protestors to Hawaiian telescopes because they have no control of their actions. Because there’s no way to change any situation, it’s all determined. 

We either will get filtered or we won’t and there’s nothing we can do about it. 

SR Ballard

On Jul 19, 2021, at 12:01 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAJPayv1vufBNesJ7nqJgHt5furtvwvXt%2Be-Jk6NqJTZMvpvgnA%40mail.gmail.com.

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 3:30 PM SR Ballard <sen....@gmail.com> wrote:

> What I’m saying and you just refuse to hear is that you “feeling” guilt would be immaterial. There is no actual guilt, because there’s no control,

 

I don't know what you're talking about. Guilt is a feeling, an emotion, there is no external objective thing involved; the Photon is the fundamental particle of light but the people at CERN are unlikely to announce that the LHC has discovered the fundamental particle of guilt, the Guiltron. If you're talking about the rationale for inflicting punishment I've already explained that the only valid and moral reason for punishing anybody for committing an antisocial action is to prevent more actions of that sort from occurring in the future.  

 

> No one is stupid or not, just robotically responding to stimuli. We can’t worry about “barbarian” protestors to Hawaiian telescopes because they have no control of their actions.

It doesn't matter what the reasons were that those Hawaiian protesters chose to act in a barbaric way and destroyed the late great Thirty Meter Telescope, the fact remains that they did destroy it and the beautiful new discoveries about the universe that wonderful instrument would have undoubtedly revealed have been delayed by at least a decade leaving the human race in ignorance. And that tragedy causes me to worry about them committing similar barbaric acts in the future, and that is more than sufficient for me to detest them. And I must say I am still astounded by your vigorous defense of those barbaric Hawaiian's anti-enlightenment actions.

> there’s nothing we can do about it. 

If you're a murderer there may be nothing you can do to prevent yourself from committing more murders in the future, but there is certainly something other people can do to prevent you from doing it. 

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

You are talking only about those cases where the determining factor is completely powerful.

Towards the end of my teaching career I got rather average student evaluations.  I attributed this to my not inflating grades the way the others were doing (I checked their grades).  Suppose I did go along.  Were the student evaluations determining my increasing the grades?  But I didn't.  I determined to stay the same.  If the dean had threatened my tenure I would have changed - powerful determinant.  So to a certain extent we do choose our determinants.  Ballard, you are using the word in a different way than I am.   bill w

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/D1793909-3C75-419E-B6BC-4DC2F332305D%40gmail.com.

[William Flynn Wallace]

Why? I am aware of no law of logic that demands every event have a cause.

John K Clark    My own mind demands it.  An effect without a cause?  Ludicrous.  I am assuming that you are talking about quantum physics re random.  If there is no cause, then there is no effect, so we can't use the word 'effect', can we?  Event perhaps.  Please don't attempt to explain that to me.  bill w

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAJPayv2q6F-Z8ekwUHC6g_0gaxDhuA94N0%3DwoHePAwW8R818gQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 4:43 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> I am aware of no law of logic that demands every event have a cause. John K Clark 

  > My own mind demands it.

It's easy enough to understand why Evolution would give our minds that bias, many things do indeed have causes and survival is enhanced if one starts with the assumption that any problem in calendared has a cause and therefore a potential solution, but Evolution is interested in survival not truth so that doesn't prove everything has a cause. And if you don't like a chain of iterated "why did that happen?" questions terminating in a brute fact would you really be more comfortable if the chain of why questions continued on for infinity with no final ultimate explanation for why it happened? Those are the only two possibilities, it continues on forever or terminates in a brute fact. Right now the best evidence is that it terminates in a brute fact.

John K Clark   

[John Clark]

I meant to say encountered not calendared 

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 00:09, William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

Just what is an 'undetermined' event'?  bill w

A determined event is one that is fixed due to prior events, such that if the prior events happen the determined event necessarily happens. It is also called a caused event.

An undetermined event is one that is not fixed due to prior events, such that if the prior events happen the undetermined event may or may not happen. It is also called an uncaused or random event.

Determinism is the idea that all events are determined, or equivalently that there are no random events.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAO%2BxQEbsoM0FOmkRNM%2Bhqr5nPNXgGANT%3D%2BaTTCRTv-g51WQMOA%40mail.gmail.com.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 01:50, SR Ballard <sen....@gmail.com> wrote:

You can’t control your actions IF they are determined. If actions are simple cause and effect (determined), then there is no choice, only the illusion of choice. 

If you don’t mean “determined” as in “actually determines”, then picking the word determined was a huge fuckup back in the day by whoever decided that was the way to talk about it.

If actions are determined, then there’s no such thing as guilt — just like truly random actions, there was no choice, so no guilt. 

If your actions are not determined, they are random. There is no third possibility, neither-determined-nor-random. You could perhaps get away with a little bit of randomness, but too much would make it impossible to function. There are random events on the world, such as nuclear decay, but at large scales, including at biological scales, the world behaves essentially deterministically. Our notions of freedom and choice require a reliable causal connection between thought and perception, one thought and the next, thought and action, so determinism is assumed. People who claim that determinism and freedom are incompatible haven’t understood what undetermined behaviour would entail.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[William Flynn Wallace]

understood what undetermined behaviour would entail.

Stathis Papaioannou

Here's random behavior:  your left big toe itches; you right hand mimics playing a scale on the piano; one eye in batting to the beat of a Sousa march; you feel like eating; your bladder empties; you recall going to 1st grade; and so on.  And it's unpredictable what any part of your body or mind is going to do next.  bill w

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypWLJeoeG4EiHRftiSx6Vzgwqh_Qj9-RFJh2Jk2xXAsPzQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 05:30, SR Ballard <sen....@gmail.com> wrote:

What I’m saying and you just refuse to hear is that you “feeling” guilt would be immaterial. There is no actual guilt, because there’s no control, only the illusion of control. 

An illusion looks like something that it is not. The world looks flat although it isn’t, but we know what a flat surface is, and we can point to examples of it. So if we have the illusion of control we should be able to describe what real control is and perhaps point to examples of it. What would real control look like?

No one is stupid or not, just robotically responding to stimuli. We can’t worry about “barbarian” protestors to Hawaiian telescopes because they have no control of their actions. Because there’s no way to change any situation, it’s all determined. 

We either will get filtered or we won’t and there’s nothing we can do about it. 

SR Ballard

On Jul 19, 2021, at 12:01 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:



On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 11:50 AM SR Ballard <sen....@gmail.com> wrote:

> You can’t control your actions IF they are determined.

True, and you can't control your actions if things are NOT determined either, in fact nothing can because if they were not determined then your actions would have no cause.  

> If actions are determined, then there’s no such thing as guilt

Nonsense. If things are determined you could feel guilty if you are determined to feel guilty, and even if you're not determined to feel guilty you might feel that way anyway for no reason at all. 

John K Clark

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAJPayv1vufBNesJ7nqJgHt5furtvwvXt%2Be-Jk6NqJTZMvpvgnA%40mail.gmail.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/4D4F637F-1E3F-4BB1-94A2-29003456431B%40gmail.com.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 08:02, William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

understood what undetermined behaviour would entail.

Stathis Papaioannou

Here's random behavior:  your left big toe itches; you right hand mimics playing a scale on the piano; one eye in batting to the beat of a Sousa march; you feel like eating; your bladder empties; you recall going to 1st grade; and so on.  And it's unpredictable what any part of your body or mind is going to do next.  bill w

That description is consistent with your behaviour being determined, since there may be reasons for it, even if the reasons are unknown. Random behaviour is behaviour that occurs for no reason at all. The only example we have of random events are at the quantum level. Whether a radioactive nucleus decays is fundamentally random: there is nothing about the nucleus, its history, the environment that determines whether it will decay or not in the next minute. That is, it’s not just our ignorance, it is a fundamental aspect of the universe. Einstein objected to this, because he thought that there must be a reason for every event in the universe, and maybe we just haven’t discovered it. Most physicists have subsequently thought that Einstein was wrong about this.

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 4:58 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 01:50, SR Ballard <sen....@gmail.com> wrote:

You can’t control your actions IF they are determined. If actions are simple cause and effect (determined), then there is no choice, only the illusion of choice. 

If you don’t mean “determined” as in “actually determines”, then picking the word determined was a huge fuckup back in the day by whoever decided that was the way to talk about it.

If actions are determined, then there’s no such thing as guilt — just like truly random actions, there was no choice, so no guilt. 

If your actions are not determined, they are random. There is no third possibility, neither-determined-nor-random. You could perhaps get away with a little bit of randomness, but too much would make it impossible to function. There are random events on the world, such as nuclear decay, but at large scales, including at biological scales, the world behaves essentially deterministically. Our notions of freedom and choice require a reliable causal connection between thought and perception, one thought and the next, thought and action, so determinism is assumed. People who claim that determinism and freedom are incompatible haven’t understood what undetermined behaviour would entail.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypWLJeoeG4EiHRftiSx6Vzgwqh_Qj9-RFJh2Jk2xXAsPzQ%40mail.gmail.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAO%2BxQEbrzzeuzCXWqp7AsB-NPKYwMkgYbyV_i4xEeqSSX6JTiA%40mail.gmail.com.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[William Flynn Wallace]

Whether a radioactive nucleus decays is fundamentally random: there is nothing about the nucleus, its history, the environment that determines whether it will decay or not in the next minute. 

I have extreme reservations about whether they know all of this and even if they know what to look for, or indeed have the tools to do so even if they did.  To me and Einstein, random is just a word for our ignorance.  bill w

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypXHWigurDD3_iGFKPdn6n6O7yRuyAKt4xVuL%3DhpKWuvCw%40mail.gmail.com.

[SR Ballard]

So essentially I have one of you telling me that everything is 100% determined and control isn’t even an illusion of control because that implies control exists.

And another person telling me that “determined” means “influenced by”.

And then John agreeing with the first camp— So imagine my confusion, John getting mad at people who have no control over protesting a telescope, just like a rock has no control over falling when you drop it. A bit silly, no?

SR Ballard

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 11:28, William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

Whether a radioactive nucleus decays is fundamentally random: there is nothing about the nucleus, its history, the environment that determines whether it will decay or not in the next minute. 

I have extreme reservations about whether they know all of this and even if they know what to look for, or indeed have the tools to do so even if they did.  To me and Einstein, random is just a word for our ignorance.  bill w

That had always been the assumption, but as John said, there is no reason why it has to be true.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

Virus-free. www.avast.com

[Stathis Papaioannou]

"Determined" does not mean "influenced by", because an event can be influenced by prior events but undetermined. It is only determined if it is fixed by prior events. For example, if you have a choice between A and B, you like A and hate B, and you can think of no reason to choose B, you will choose A. Your choice is normally determined because you will choose A 100% of the time under these circumstances. But if your choice is only influenced by the prior events, you might choose A 90% of the time and B 10% of the time. If you choose B, it will be a choice made even though you like A and hate B and you can think of no reason to choose B. You might be OK if this sort of decision making were limited to choices that were unimportant, but if you were doing something like trying to cross a busy road, you would not survive for long.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[SR Ballard]

Again, this means that no one should be held accountable for their actions. If you can only “choose” to do the wrong thing, that’s no choice at all. How can such a person be “guilty” of murder if it was impossible for them to choose NOT to murder? How can you hold someone in contempt if they were absolutely unable to control the motions of their bodies that just so happened to be protesting the instillation of a telescope? Which, mind you, they like a clock could not help but do? 

You can’t build a functional society on the idea that people have no control over their actions. How could such a society function? 

SR Ballard

On Jul 19, 2021, at 10:06 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:



--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypWpiW_mbsqeAes50Uxgi4bT%2BBy6LkWCK%2BC-DcP7WJ8k7g%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 12:59, SR Ballard <sen....@gmail.com> wrote:

Again, this means that no one should be held accountable for their actions. If you can only “choose” to do the wrong thing, that’s no choice at all. How can such a person be “guilty” of murder if it was impossible for them to choose NOT to murder? How can you hold someone in contempt if they were absolutely unable to control the motions of their bodies that just so happened to be protesting the instillation of a telescope? Which, mind you, they like a clock could not help but do? 

There is only a point in holding someone responsible for their actions if they are determined. If you kick me, I’ll ask you but to kick me again or else I will have you charged for assault. Next time you think about kicking me you will take my threat into account, weighing it up with the pros and cons of kicking me, and you might decide not to kick me. The weighing up of the pros and cons is an algorithmic (or deterministic) process: there is one output for a given input, and the output can only change if the input changes. If your actions are 90% deterministic it is still worth asking you not to kick me, as it will be 90% as effective. If your actions are completely undetermined, my asking you not to kick me, or anything else that is said or done to you, will be completely ineffective. In fact, our entire moral and legal system would be ineffective. There is only a point in holding someone accountable for their actions to the extent that they are determined.

You can’t build a functional society on the idea that people have no control over their actions. How could such a society function? 

SR Ballard

On Jul 19, 2021, at 10:06 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:



On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 11:29, SR Ballard <sen....@gmail.com> wrote:

So essentially I have one of you telling me that everything is 100% determined and control isn’t even an illusion of control because that implies control exists.

And another person telling me that “determined” means “influenced by”.

And then John agreeing with the first camp— So imagine my confusion, John getting mad at people who have no control over protesting a telescope, just like a rock has no control over falling when you drop it. A bit silly, no?

"Determined" does not mean "influenced by", because an event can be influenced by prior events but undetermined. It is only determined if it is fixed by prior events. For example, if you have a choice between A and B, you like A and hate B, and you can think of no reason to choose B, you will choose A. Your choice is normally determined because you will choose A 100% of the time under these circumstances. But if your choice is only influenced by the prior events, you might choose A 90% of the time and B 10% of the time. If you choose B, it will be a choice made even though you like A and hate B and you can think of no reason to choose B. You might be OK if this sort of decision making were limited to choices that were unimportant, but if you were doing something like trying to cross a busy road, you would not survive for long.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypWpiW_mbsqeAes50Uxgi4bT%2BBy6LkWCK%2BC-DcP7WJ8k7g%40mail.gmail.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/F803AE10-8A23-4EB1-924B-9730EC13C366%40gmail.com.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[SR Ballard]

I don’t know how that makes any sense. If actions are determined, thinking doesn’t matter — the input decides, not you. So maybe you saying “stop” works or maybe it doesn’t, but the person kicking you has no control over themselves kicking you. They can’t choose because their actions are determined by forces outside of their own control. And you, simultaneously can’t choose to ask them to stop or not, you too are simply controlled as well, and either will or won’t based on something you can’t control. 

So we’re all acting out actions without any control of ourselves. If anyone misbehaves it is simply because the environment they have been in was inadequate, and so their actions are not their fault, but instead like a windup clock they are forced to do everything they do. 

SR Ballard

On Jul 20, 2021, at 12:01 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypVS%3DT0NKdyR-L_TBpa1hwJ6ahY2gBnumvh5LqbJdADktQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 14:52, SR Ballard <sen....@gmail.com> wrote:

I don’t know how that makes any sense. If actions are determined, thinking doesn’t matter — the input decides, not you. So maybe you saying “stop” works or maybe it doesn’t, but the person kicking you has no control over themselves kicking you. They can’t choose because their actions are determined by forces outside of their own control. And you, simultaneously can’t choose to ask them to stop or not, you too are simply controlled as well, and either will or won’t based on something you can’t control. 

So we’re all acting out actions without any control of ourselves. If anyone misbehaves it is simply because the environment they have been in was inadequate, and so their actions are not their fault, but instead like a windup clock they are forced to do everything they do.

When you say "the input decides, not you" you forget that you are part of the input that determines the outcome. If the outcome is not determined, it means that it is not determined by ANYTHING, including by you. You can't have control over the outcome if it is not determined by ANYTHING.

[SR Ballard]

So is it fixed or can I decide the outcome? 

You keep using “determined” in a way that makes no sense to me. 

Do you mean “forced”, such as I let go of a ball and it falls to the floor? Because that is how it sounds like you are using it. That’s definitely what John is yelling at me, that’s we’re just biological machines, slaves to our environment.

Or do you mean “influenced”, such as I have a past and preferences, and I use my mind to figure out which action I think is “best”, however I decide to define that?

SR Ballard

On Jul 20, 2021, at 2:37 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:



--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypVBCRjMOEHZw_%2BONXpcyjpO%3DtzN0%3D4g4h%2Bg3Qm1Y6x16g%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 17:54, SR Ballard <sen....@gmail.com> wrote:

So is it fixed or can I decide the outcome? 

You keep using “determined” in a way that makes no sense to me. 

Do you mean “forced”, such as I let go of a ball and it falls to the floor? Because that is how it sounds like you are using it. That’s definitely what John is yelling at me, that’s we’re just biological machines, slaves to our environment.

Or do you mean “influenced”, such as I have a past and preferences, and I use my mind to figure out which action I think is “best”, however I decide to define that?

We are just biological machines who make decisions according to our preferences, values, expectations, prejudices, experiences and so on. Our decisions are fixed due to these determining factors, not just influenced by them. This is more obvious if you consider a serious rather than a trivial decision. Suppose you are deciding whether to kill your neighbour. You have nothing to gain by killing them, you think murder is wrong, and you don’t want to go to prison: so you decide not to kill them. The decision is determined, because under the same circumstances you would make the same decision 100% of the time; or to put it differently, you would only make a different decision under different circumstances, such as if you felt threatened by them, or if you were a psychopath. But if your decisions were only influenced rather than fixed by the determining factors, sometimes you would decide to kill the neighbour EVEN THOUGH you had nothing to gain by it, you think murder is wrong and you don’t want to go to prison. By definition, you would have no control over your behaviour at these times, because control requires that your behaviour be effectively determined. It may seem counterintuitive, but it is accepted by most modern philosophers that the libertarian definition of free will as being incompatible with determinism is wrong.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 9:28 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Whether a radioactive nucleus decays is fundamentally random: there is nothing about the nucleus, its history, the environment that determines whether it will decay or not in the next minute. I have extreme reservations about whether they know all of this and even if they know what to look for, or indeed have the tools to do so even if they did.  To me and Einstein, random is just a word for our ignorance.  bill w

If you want to maintain that contrary to nearly all physicist's beliefs true randomness is impossible and that everything happens for a reason then fine, but then in the next breath don't start talking about "free will" and how humans are not deterministic Turing machines.

John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 9:29 PM SR Ballard <sen....@gmail.com> wrote:

> imagine my confusion,

I imagine there WAS a cause for your confusion OR there WAS NOT a cause for your confusion;  you seem to be maintaining that both of those propositions could be false, while I maintain that is logically impossible. I maintain that either things happen for a reason or things don't happen for a reason. Is that bland statement really so controversial?  

 

> John getting mad at people who have no control over protesting a telescope,

The short answer why I’m angry at the Hawaiian asshole barbarians is because Evolution made me that way. Evolution has found that anger can be a useful emotion, if we perceive that somebody has caused us harm then we get angry at them, that means we want to punish them, or if that is not possible at least be repelled and have nothing to do with them, and that action increases survival prospects. The Thirty Meter Telescope was the largest in the world, the largest by far, and it should have become operational a decade ago, but because of the Hawaiian nincompoops and their idiotic invisible man who lives on top of the mountain it never will be depriving me of the joy of learning about new wonders from the edge of the observable universe that wonderful instrument would have revealed. And that act of intellectual vandalism makes me mad as hell.

 

> just like a rock has no control over falling when you drop it. A bit silly, no?

A human has a memory, a rock does not, that's why they behave differently.  If I punish a rock that has harmed me it will not reduce the likelihood the rock will harm me again, nor will it act as a deterrent discouraging other rocks from harming me in the future, but punishing a human who has harmed me could increase my safety. And I think that is the only morally valid reason for ever punishing anybody for anything, I think that's the difference between justice and vengeance. 

> A bit silly, no?

Don't tell that to me, tell it to Charles Darwin.  

John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 10:59 PM SR Ballard <sen....@gmail.com> wrote:

>You can’t build a functional society on the idea that people have no control over their actions. 

Yes you can.  

> How could such a society function? 

By punishing those that break society's laws.  It is an empirical fact that punishment affects behavior.

John K Clark   

[Stathis Papaioannou]

And it wouldn’t affect behaviour if the behaviour were undetermined. That’s what people who think determinism is contrary to legal and moral responsibility don’t get.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Jul 19, 2021, at 1:43 PM, William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

Why? I am aware of no law of logic that demands every event have a cause.

John K Clark    My own mind demands it.  An effect without a cause?  Ludicrous.  I am assuming that you are talking about quantum physics re random.  If there is no cause, then there is no effect, so we can't use the word 'effect', can we?  Event perhaps.  Please don't attempt to explain that to me.  bill w

You’ve shifted terminology there. You went from an _event_ without a cause to an _effect_ without a cause. That’s like saying “‘not every adult is married’ is illogical because if there’s a spouse, there’s a marriage.” ;)

(One can quibble here about uncaused stuff. I notice that everyone here seems to be thinking in terms of events, but stuff can include more than events, such as things (like an apple or an electron) among others.)

As a general rule, I stay out of discussions of free will. They tend to produce more heat than light, IMO.

Regards,

Dan

[Stuart LaForge]

On Tuesday, July 20, 2021 at 2:32:27 AM UTC-7 johnk...@gmail.com wrote:

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 10:59 PM SR Ballard <sen....@gmail.com> wrote:

>You can’t build a functional society on the idea that people have no control over their actions. 

Yes you can.

 

Indeed, functional societies where the citizens believe that they have no control over their own actions are called totalitarian regimes. They can function, so long as the populace can be gas-lighted into believing they have no control over their action. 

> How could such a society function? 

By punishing those that break society's laws.  It is an empirical fact that punishment affects behavior.

 

It is also an empirical fact that perceived, or even imaginary, authority affects behavior. Look up Milgram, the lab coat effect, and Stanford prison experiments for details. Maybe those who believe that they have free-will, self-determination, agency, or autonomy (all the same things really) actually have it. While, everybody else is just a cog in the big machine or worse, an NPC in someone else' s game.

Stuart LaForge

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 2:26 PM Dan TheBookMan <danus...@gmail.com> wrote:

> One can quibble here about uncaused stuff. I notice that everyone here seems to be thinking in terms of events, but stuff can include more than events, such as things (like an apple or an electron) among others.

An event is a physical situation that occurs at a specific point in space and at a specific instance of time, so the obvious question to ask is "why is this apple at this place at this time?" or even "why is there an apple at any place at any time?" 

John K Clark   

 

[Dan TheBookMan]

No shit. My point was there are different perspectives based on what
one thinks is fundamental here.

Regards,

Dan

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 10:31 PM Dan TheBookMan <danus...@gmail.com> wrote:

>My point was there are different perspectives based on what one thinks is fundamental here.

And my point was that if one is talking about determinism NOTHING is more fundamental than the fact that a particular event DID happen for a reason OR it DID NOT happen for a reason. Logically one and only one of those statements must be true,  but the "free will" advocates are claiming  both those statements are false on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays, and on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays they're claiming both those statements are true, and on Sunday they're a bit confused.  And that's why the idea of "free will" is not wrong, it's gibberish.

John K Clark

 

[Stathis Papaioannou]

Specifically, many libertarian free will advocates claim our actions are neither determined nor undetermined, which is a violation of the logical law of excluded middle.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Stuart LaForge]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 2:29 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

Specifically, many libertarian free will advocates claim our actions are neither determined nor undetermined, which is a violation of the logical law of excluded middle.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

While I claim to be libertarian in a political sense, I am not an incompatibilist. I believe our actions are determined, but our actions are determined by us. Any apparent randomness or unpredictability in a person's actions are the result of deterministic chaos and are therefore only epistemically random in the Bayesian sense of "quantified ignorance". My concept of free-will is more along the lines of Sartre's "radical freedom", than say the indeterminate free-will of Descartes or Berkeley. That is to say, that I recognize that I always have alternatives when making a choice even if some of the alternatives are too costly for me to stomach. For example, if you try to force me to do something at gunpoint, I do have the option of trying to wrestle the gun away from you, or simply telling you to fuck off, if I am willing to accept the consequences of my decision. The fact that there are always alternative options that I did not take, that is to say counterfactually definite alternative futures from every decision I make, suggests the existence of Everett branches where I take those options.

Stuart LaForge 

[SR Ballard]

This is my position also, but you explained it much better than I could. 

SR Ballard

On Jul 21, 2021, at 3:33 PM, Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:



--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CADZgGHPeP7S%3Du9%2BskAN-bMjw3XrQQqhKTp%2Be1CbDqQ4OpTxUBw%40mail.gmail.com.

[John Clark]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 3:33 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

 > I believe our actions are determined, but our actions are determined by us. 

And a Turing Machine's actions depend on if it sees a zero or a one on a tape, and on the state it happens to be in, which depends on if it had previously seen a zero or a one on the tape.  

> Any apparent randomness or unpredictability in a person's actions are the result of deterministic chaos and are therefore only epistemically random in the Bayesian sense of "quantified ignorance".

It's more than just that. If true quantum randomness doesn't directly affect the human brain,  and it almost certainly does, it certainly affects the outside environment and changes what we see and hear, which changes our actions. 

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

Not a good idea to speculate ahead of the data, on randomness or anything else.   Saying it's a possibility is one thing - attaching any kind of probability to it is farcical.bill w

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAJPayv3pNNvHBgiN2M0eqVxnzBaoxSMi6ThFA3Pjp3-VA3wfOA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

The position whereby free will and determinism are held to be compatible is called compatibilism. Most modern philosophers are compatibilists.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[John Clark]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 5:32 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Not a good idea to speculate ahead of the data, on randomness or anything else.   Saying it's a possibility is one thing - attaching any kind of probability to it is farcical.bill w

With hardware It's easy to take tiny but true random events that exist in the quantum world and magnify them so they have an effect in our everyday macro world. This website will generate true random numbers in hexadecimal notation: 

Random hex

If you'd rather have random colors you can see them here: 

Random colors

If you want to listen to randomness you can hear it here: 

Random bernoulli noise

And if you want to know how the hardware randomness generator that did all of this works you can find out here: 

Maximization of Extractable Randomness in a Quantum Random-Number Generator

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

John K Clark

Are those your examples of quantum effects in the real world?  bill w

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAJPayv3EvQFp9zXzfNMiV6bZXp5fBn94kKSzaMeyFE71UvDh5w%40mail.gmail.com.

[John Clark]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 7:18 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Not a good idea to speculate ahead of the data, on randomness or anything else.   Saying it's a possibility is one thing - attaching any kind of probability to it is farcical.bill w

With hardware It's easy to take tiny but true random events that exist in the quantum world and magnify them so they have an effect in our everyday macro world. This website will generate true random numbers in hexadecimal notation: 

Random hex

If you'd rather have random colors you can see them here: 

Random colors

If you want to listen to randomness you can hear it here: 

Random bernoulli noise

And if you want to know how the hardware randomness generator that did all of this works you can find out here: 

Maximization of Extractable Randomness in a Quantum Random-Number Generator

John K Clark

 

> Are those your examples of quantum effects in the real world?  bill w

Rather than get into the question of if our everyday macro world is the "real" world or not I will just say that if you've read any of those random hexadecimal numbers that have been Quantum Mechanicly derived then you have read them in the same world that you're reading this post.

John K Clark
 

[Stuart LaForge]

On Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 2:27:48 PM UTC-7 johnk...@gmail.com wrote:

On Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 3:33 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

 > I believe our actions are determined, but our actions are determined by us. 

And a Turing Machine's actions depend on if it sees a zero or a one on a tape, and on the state it happens to be in, which depends on if it had previously seen a zero or a one on the tape.

I think it is an over-simplification to call us Turing machines. We do share properties with Turing machines, but there are some key differences between us and Turing machines. For one thing, because of their infinite tapes, a network of Turing machines, including network traffic and other network effects, can be completely simulated by a single Turing machine. We do not have infinite tape, therefore the same cannot be said of us. So a single neuron cannot simulate an entire brain and a single individual cannot simulate an entire society. We are networks whose emergent properties do not fit within our nodes.

 

> Any apparent randomness or unpredictability in a person's actions are the result of deterministic chaos and are therefore only epistemically random in the Bayesian sense of "quantified ignorance".

It's more than just that. If true quantum randomness doesn't directly affect the human brain,  and it almost certainly does, it certainly affects the outside environment and changes what we see and hear, which changes our actions. 

The brain may or may not be a quantum computer, but quantum wave functions evolve deterministically. Therefore, you still get to decide whether you are in the universe where you have coffee or the one where you have tea. The interesting question is if one is indecisive about a given choice,  does that put one into a quantum superposition?

Stuart LaForge

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 12:57 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

>> And a Turing Machine's actions depend on if it sees a zero or a one on a tape, and on the state it happens to be in, which depends on if it had previously seen a zero or a one on the tape.

>I think it is an over-simplification to call us Turing machines. We do share properties with Turing machines, but there are some key differences between us and Turing machines. For one thing, because of their infinite tapes,

That is incorrect. Turing machines have an unspecified amount of tape not an infinite amount, there is a difference. Any Turing machine that has halted and therefore produced a result has only used a finite amount of tape, and any Turing machine that is still working on a problem has also only used a finite amount of tape. You will never find a Turing machine that has used an infinite amount of tape.

 

> The brain may or may not be a quantum computer,

It almost certainly isn't, there is nothing in the brain's anatomy that would allow the quantum coherence that would be necessary.

> but quantum wave functions evolve deterministically.

True, but the quantum wave function is not an observable quantity, only the square of the absolute value of the quantum wave function is an observable quantity, and even then it's only a probability. 

 

> Therefore, you still get to decide whether you are in the universe where you have coffee or the one where you have tea.

There are only 2 possibilities, you made your choice for a reason or you did not make your choice for a reason.  You were reasonable or you were unreasonable. You were deterministic or you were random. You are a cuckoo clock or you are a roulette wheel. 

John K Clark

 

[William Flynn Wallace]

I don't get it.  There is no such thing as random brain activity, as far as I am aware.  The only one I know of is electroshock therapy and all you get from that is a Grand Mal epileptic fit.

Please explain random behavior.  We say things like 'for no reason at all' but that is not to be taken literally.  You can blame all behavior on spinal reflexes or the id.    bill w

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAJPayv1-J2300puozYuJ-EBUqALmHcojLCQTB6W_3L32o-9aXg%40mail.gmail.com.

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 5:50 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Please explain random behavior.

If a random number generator comes up with a zero I will serve you coffee, if it comes up with a 1 I will serve you tea. 

> We say things like 'for no reason at all' but that is not to be taken literally

Unless everything we know about modern physics turns out to be wrong you should take it literally because some things do happen for no reason at all.

John K Clark  

[William Flynn Wallace]

On Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 4:58 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 5:50 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Please explain random behavior.

If a random number generator comes up with a zero I will serve you coffee, if it comes up with a 1 I will serve you tea. I accept tht the numbers are random but the behaviors are not - perfectly normal serving of tea or coffee

bill w

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Tue, 27 Jul 2021 at 07:50, William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't get it.  There is no such thing as random brain activity, as far as I am aware.  The only one I know of is electroshock therapy and all you get from that is a Grand Mal epileptic fit.

Please explain random behavior.  We say things like 'for no reason at all' but that is not to be taken literally.  You can blame all behavior on spinal reflexes or the id.    bill w

An event is determined if it is fixed due to prior events, such that if the prior events happen the determined event necessarily happens. Another way to put this is that the determined event can only be different if the prior events are different. Suppose the event at issue is a choice between A and B, and you choose A. If the choice is determined, you could only have chosen B under different circumstances, and that difference in circumstances is the reason for choosing A rather than B. For example, you chose A because A was cheaper, and if A were not cheaper, you might have chosen B. But if you could have chosen A or B under EXACTLY the same circumstances, it means there was no reason for choosing A over B or B over A. The choice is undetermined or, synonymously, random.

As you and others have said in this thread, determinism is sometimes contrasted with free will, on the grounds that you can’t be free if your actions are determined. But if your actions were undetermined, they would be random, in the sense described above. That might be OK if you are choosing a flavour of ice cream, but not if you are doing anything important, such as crossing the road or deciding whether to kill people. This is a bad way to define free will! Most modern philosophers reject this definition.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Stuart LaForge]

On Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 2:38 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 12:57 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

>> And a Turing Machine's actions depend on if it sees a zero or a one on a tape, and on the state it happens to be in, which depends on if it had previously seen a zero or a one on the tape.

>I think it is an over-simplification to call us Turing machines. We do share properties with Turing machines, but there are some key differences between us and Turing machines. For one thing, because of their infinite tapes,

That is incorrect. Turing machines have an unspecified amount of tape not an infinite amount, there is a difference.

 

Turing machines are mathematical models and not based on anything physical. While I applaud that this is a subtle detail that most computer-science professionals would probably choose to ignore, the reason that Turing did not specify a tape length in his original 1947 paper was because he pointedly did not want it to become an issue. The implicit assumption was that Turing machines would have enough tape to complete any computation no matter how large. If one considers Turing machines that don't halt, then they must have infinite tape. Otherwise, if a Turing machine has only a finite amount of tape, then one will never know if it halted because the function was uncomputable or because it ran out of tape. In other words, truly uncomputable functions can only exist if Turning machines can access infinite amounts of tape and still fail to halt with output. There are plenty of irrational numbers that one can find Turning machines that can compute, such as the infinite digits of pi. But, no Turing machine with finite tape can compute pi exactly, yet Archimedes's constant pi is computable compared to, for example, Chaitin's constant which is not.

Any Turing machine that has halted and therefore produced a result has only used a finite amount of tape, and any Turing machine that is still working on a problem has also only used a finite amount of tape. You will never find a Turing machine that has used an infinite amount of tape.

Simply because I will never find one does not mean such a thing does not, or will not exist.

 

> The brain may or may not be a quantum computer

It almost certainly isn't, there is nothing in the brain's anatomy that would allow the quantum coherence that would be necessary.

Other than Planck's constant, what is the difference between classical wave mechanics and quantum mechanics? The mind might not be a quantum mechanical  phenomenon, although it could be. But it is most certainly a wave-mechanical one. Brain waves of various frequencies as observed on an EEG are an uncontroversial fact, and like any waves, they MUST interfere both constructively and destructively with one another. They could, even as classical waves, give rise to many, if not all, of the properties that quantum systems exhibit such as interference, superposition, and delocalization. I mean if the wave function of a free electron of known momentum can have positive probability amplitude everywhere. then why would it be so hard to believe that multiple minds could have the same thought, by the same mechanism? I mean is an actual physical electron more or less substantial than an idea?

> but quantum wave functions evolve deterministically.

True, but the quantum wave function is not an observable quantity, only the square of the absolute value of the quantum wave function is an observable quantity, and even then it's only a probability.

You could say almost the same thing about infinity. It is not an observable quantity either.You can only observe however much of it that intersects your light cone, and even then it is only a probability. Why is one more real (complex?) for you than the other?

 

> Therefore, you still get to decide whether you are in the universe where you have coffee or the one where you have tea.

There are only 2 possibilities, you made your choice for a reason or you did not make your choice for a reason.  You were reasonable or you were unreasonable. You were deterministic or you were random. You are a cuckoo clock or you are a roulette wheel.

Yes, and the beauty of free-will is that I can choose from moment to moment whether to be a cuckoo clock for some decisions or a roulette-wheel for others. 

Stuart LaForge

 

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2021 at 12:39 AM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Turing machines have an unspecified amount of tape not an infinite amount, there is a difference.

 

>Turing machines are mathematical models and not based on anything physical.

That is incorrect, a tape is physical and by printing either a zero or a one on that tape you are making a physical change. Information is physical, and the operation of any physical computer can be logically mapped onto a Turing Machine. 

 

> While I applaud that this is a subtle detail that most computer-science professionals would probably choose to ignore,

If somebody ignores that then they could still be a competent computer system administrator but they could not be a computer science professional.

 

> The implicit assumption was that Turing machines would have enough tape to complete any computation no matter how large.

 

Yes, but if it requires an infinite amount of Tape then the Turing Machine will never complete the calculation. If a problem can be calculated then there is a Turing machine that can do so, it will halt and produce an answer, the machine capable of doing that might need a very large number of states but that number would always be finite. A 2 symbol (zero and one) Turing Machine can be in N states plus the halt state, so there are [4(N+1)]^2N different N state Turing Machines. For example in a one state Turing Machine:

If the machine reads a zero on the tape there are 8 things the state could tell the machine what to do: 

Write a zero or a one.

Shift right or left.

Read the state again or go to the halt state 

and  2*2*2=8

And If the machine reads a 1 there are also 8 things the state could tell it to do. 

Write a zero or a one.

Shift right or left.

Read the state again or go to the halt state 

 And 2*2*2=8

So you'd need 8*8= 64 states, or to put it another way there are 64 different one state Turing Machines, and 20,736 two state machines etc.  In the course of the calculation if you find that the tape is insufficient and the machine needs more states to finish the problem then you increase the size of N by sticking on more tape. The question Turing asked himself is, before you start running the problem, is there some way to tell if there will come a time when you can stop the tape adding procedure, that is to say can you be sure the machine will eventually halt and produce an answer? Turing proved the answer was NO. And because you'd only be able to stop adding tape if the machine halts; and that would only happen when the machine is finished running the program it had been programmed to solve and produce an answer,  and because every known calculation performed by a computer or a human can be logically mapped to a Turing Machine, that means that some problems are undecidable.

Thanks to Godel and Turing we know that there are an infinite number of statements that are true but have no proof, that is to say there would be no way to show they are true in a finite number of steps. If the Goldbach Conjecture is one of those statements, (and if it isn't there are a infinite number of similar statements that are) then if you write a simple computer program that will look for the first even number greater than 2 that is not the sum of two primes and then stop there is no way to know if it will ever "decide" stop. There is no shortcut with a proof, you just have to try every number. If the Goldbach Conjecture is false then it will eventually stop, but there is no what to know how long it will take, and if the Goldbach Conjecture is true then it will never stop, but there is no way you could know it will never stop and thus no way to know that the Goldbach Conjecture is true. So a billion years from now our Jupiter Brain descendants will still be grinding through huge numbers looking, unsuccessfully, for a counterexample to prove that the Goldbach Conjecture is false, and also looking, unsuccessfully, for a proof to show that it is true.  

And there are some functions that we know have well defined finite answers that we know for sure are nevertheless not computable. The Busy Beaver function for example is not computable; the Busy Beaver number for a N state Turing Machine is the maximum number of 1's that can be printed for a N state Turing Machine THAT HALTS. The first 4 Busy Beaver numbers have been computed, they are 1, 6, 21, and 107. The busy beaver number for a 5 state Busy Beaver machine MIGHT be 4098 because one 5 state Turing Machinehalts after going through 47,176,870 steps and after printing prints 4098 1s; but the trouble is there are 19 other 5 state Busy Beaver machines that are still going strong after 81.8 billion steps, maybe all of those 19 will eventually halt and that would prove that the 5'th Busy Beaver number is calculable, or maybe none will ever halt, there is no way to tell, all you can do is keep calculating and watch what it does, and you might be watching forever. It has been proven that the 748'th Busy Beaver number is definitely not computable, so even though that number is well-defined and finite if God exists even He doesn't know what the 748'th Busy Beaver number is. But there are a lot of numbers between 4 and 748 so it would be cool to know what the smallest non-computable Busy Beaver number is (my hunch, and I could be entirely wrong, is that it's 5) , but even that may not be computable.

 

> If one considers Turing machines that don't halt, then they must have infinite tape.

But even if a non-halting Turing machine had an infinite amount of tape it wouldn't matter because it still wouldn't be able to produce an answer to the problem it had been programmed to solve because it will never halt.

>> Any Turing machine that has halted and therefore produced a result has only used a finite amount of tape, and any Turing machine that is still working on a problem has also only used a finite amount of tape. You will never find a Turing machine that has used an infinite amount of tape.

> Simply because I will never find one does not mean such a thing does not, or will not exist.

A Turing Machine that requires an infinite amount of tape is an unsuccessful Turing machine that will not find the answer it has been programmed to find, not even if you gave it an eternal amount of time to work with.  

> Other than Planck's constant, what is the difference between classical wave mechanics and quantum mechanics?

The fundamental difference between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics is that classical mechanics produces an exact answer which happens to be wrong, while Quantum Mechanics can only produce a probability that does however have the virtue of being correct.  Wave mechanics uses Schrodinger's wave equation to perform Quantum Mechanics, but there are other ways to do it, if you like you can forget about the quantum wave function entirely and do Quantum Mechanics with Heisenberg's matrix mechanics which Heisenberg invented a few months before Schrodinger came up with his wave equation. For most problems the mathematics is usually simpler with wave mechanics, but which you use is a matter of taste because both methods produce identical results. 

>> the quantum wave function is not an observable quantity, only the square of the absolute value of the quantum wave function is an observable quantity, and even then it's only a probability.

>You could say almost the same thing about infinity. It is not an observable quantity either.You can only observe however much of it that intersects your light cone, and even then it is only a probability.

I don't know what you mean by that, "light cones" come from relativity and relativity is a classical theory, it produces definite answers not probabilities. And that is why we know Einstein's relativity cannot be entirely correct, although as of today nobody has been able to come up with a better theory of gravity, but there must be one out there somewhere.  

>> There are only 2 possibilities, you made your choice for a reason or you did not make your choice for a reason.  You were reasonable or you were unreasonable. You were deterministic or you were random. You are a cuckoo clock or you are a roulette wheel.

> Yes, and the beauty of free-will is that I can choose from moment to moment whether to be a cuckoo clock for some decisions or a roulette-wheel for others. 

There are only 2 possibilities, you DID make your choice to be a roulette wheel and not a cuckoo clock for a reason, or you DID NOT make your choice to be a roulette wheel and not a cuckoo clock for a reason.

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

I have to doubt that you can make two situations exactly equal.  No matter what you told me, I'd try to find a cause somewhere. Just because you don't know it, doesn't make it random.   bill w

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypVW2aLDgi2BF6wrDt%3D4FF%2Bg2F-KRHD3TMUm4FN3C3FfWQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Wed, 28 Jul 2021 at 03:23, William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have to doubt that you can make two situations exactly equal.  No matter what you told me, I'd try to find a cause somewhere. Just because you don't know it, doesn't make it random.   bill w

I’m not suggesting we act randomly, but that’s the definition of libertarian free will, even though when it’s pointed out to people who support it they often deny what they just said, and sometimes get annoyed with the discussion, as if you’ve trapped them into contradicting themselves.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAO%2BxQEatyPY5aA_nCSP9q-WXSijMmaqtMfSO%3DYQ5YwSeXtD%2BbQ%40mail.gmail.com.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[William Flynn Wallace]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2021 at 2:28 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

I’m not suggesting we act randomly, but that’s the definition of libertarian free will, even though when it’s pointed out to people who support it they often deny what they just said, and sometimes get annoyed with the discussion, as if you’ve trapped them into contradicting themselves.

Did you read my earlier post of random behavior?  LIke the St. Vitus dance, as my Dad would have said.  Totally without any rational movements or thoughts.  Completely crazy in and out.  I am to a certain extent a libertarian, but all behavior, to me, comes from the id and/or reflexes and while it might be unrelated to external stimuli, it is certainly related to what is going on in the id - which we have no way of knowing - Freud was wrong.  Something might get started by something random in our environment, as John says, but it is processed by the id which is the ultimate cause, often modified by the ego and superego (yeah, those are dated terms, but I am comfortable with them as metaphors).   bill w

On Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 6:22 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

 Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't get it.  There is no such thing as random brain activity, as far as I am aware.  The only one I know of is electroshock therapy and all you get from that is a Grand Mal epileptic fit.

Please explain random behavior.  We say things like 'for no reason at all' but that is not to be taken literally.  You can blame all behavior on spinal reflexes or the id.    bill w

An event is determined if it is fixed due to prior events, such that if the prior events happen the determined event necessarily happens. Another way to put this is that the determined event can only be different if the prior events are different. Suppose the event at issue is a choice between A and B, and you choose A. If the choice is determined, you could only have chosen B under different circumstances, and that difference in circumstances is the reason for choosing A rather than B. For example, you chose A because A was cheaper, and if A were not cheaper, you might have chosen B. But if you could have chosen A or B under EXACTLY the same circumstances, it means there was no reason for choosing A over B or B over A. The choice is undetermined or, synonymously, random.

As you and others have said in this thread, determinism is sometimes contrasted with free will, on the grounds that you can’t be free if your actions are determined. But if your actions were undetermined, they would be random, in the sense described above. That might be OK if you are choosing a flavour of ice cream, but not if you are doing anything important, such as crossing the road or deciding whether to kill people. This is a bad way to define free will! Most modern philosophers reject this definition.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypVW2aLDgi2BF6wrDt%3D4FF%2Bg2F-KRHD3TMUm4FN3C3FfWQ%40mail.gmail.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAO%2BxQEatyPY5aA_nCSP9q-WXSijMmaqtMfSO%3DYQ5YwSeXtD%2BbQ%40mail.gmail.com.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "extropolis" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to extropolis+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypXzn_1yy91sBH%3DvMZrmEBa17JBHK73LnrB%3Djp6BXxXNZg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Wed, 28 Jul 2021 at 05:49, William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jul 27, 2021 at 2:28 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

I’m not suggesting we act randomly, but that’s the definition of libertarian free will, even though when it’s pointed out to people who support it they often deny what they just said, and sometimes get annoyed with the discussion, as if you’ve trapped them into contradicting themselves.

Did you read my earlier post of random behavior?  LIke the St. Vitus dance, as my Dad would have said.  Totally without any rational movements or thoughts.  Completely crazy in and out.  I am to a certain extent a libertarian, but all behavior, to me, comes from the id and/or reflexes and while it might be unrelated to external stimuli, it is certainly related to what is going on in the id - which we have no way of knowing - Freud was wrong.  Something might get started by something random in our environment, as John says, but it is processed by the id which is the ultimate cause, often modified by the ego and superego (yeah, those are dated terms, but I am comfortable with them as metaphors).   bill w

Yes, but libertarian free will, which is the technical term for what you have been calling just “free will”, requires that our behaviour be random, which has the problems you described. Since our behaviour isn’t random, fortunately we don’t have this type of free will.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAO%2BxQEbs8Jk%3DeqAuQJ0JF9jS1ky_TBU4xUjaON9CXLXbdW_BKQ%40mail.gmail.com.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[William Flynn Wallace]

Can you give me a link to this libertarian random free will idea?  Thanks!    bill w

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypW5bHR5f3WVgPEh8AWA0U6hh8ews1Jy1Xis8H6%2BXh0g-g%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Wed, 28 Jul 2021 at 10:00, William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

Can you give me a link to this libertarian random free will idea?  Thanks!    bill w

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incompatibilism

Incompatibilism is the idea that free will and determinism are incompatible. People who define free will this way and believe that it exists (because they think determinism is false) are called libertarians, while people who define free will this way and believe that it does not exist (because they think determinism is true) are called hard determinists.

Determinism is the idea that every event is determined by prior events, or equivalently that there are no random events. Libertarians therefore believe that we can only be free if our behaviour is random, going on the definition of libertarianism. However, most of them will say, if confronted with this, that they do not think that their behaviour is random, although they still think that they have libertarian free will. They thus contradict themselves.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAO%2BxQEYbZ422fNGFGLj510CSNRnrdDxUUENXG4ssMZWUi3YUaw%40mail.gmail.com.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2021 at 1:23 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> No matter what you told me, I'd try to find a cause somewhere. Just because you don't know it, doesn't make it random.   bill w

We know for certain through experiment  that Bell's Inequality is violated, therefore if you insist on retaining causality in all situations then you're gonna have to pay a very heavy price, the universe would have to be either unrealistic or non-local. Einstein disliked losing causality but Bell's inequality was discovered more than a decade after his death and I think he would have hated non-locality even more than non-causality, as for the universe being unrealistic I'm not sure what Einstein's position would have been if he'd known about Bell and the violation of his inequality that experimentation has found.

Non-locality means that 2 particles can influence each other instantly regardless of distance, and the strength of that influence is not weakened by distance, and that affect will change nothing between the two particles and be absolutely undetectable in the vast space between them, and there is nothing that transmits the intervening force between the two particles it just happens. It seems to me that if the world was really non-local then it would be impossible to do science, in fact it would be impossible to make a prediction of any sort because; for example a solar flare on a star 10 billion light years away at the edge of the observable universe could have just as big an effect on the earth as a similar sized solar flare on our sun. You'd have to know everything before you could know anything, your knowledge would have to be either total or zero, nothing in between.

Realism means a particle exists in one and only one form even if nobody has observed it. Hugh Everett's Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is NOT a realistic theory, and I personally think it is the best interpretation there is about what's really going on at the quantum level, or at least the best anybody has found so far.

Actually there is a very very small loophole in Bell's argument, the universe could be superdeterministic, but it is such a gross violation of Occam's razor I think the idea can be dismissed immediately. This briefly describes why I think the idea is ridiculous: 

Superdeterminism in comics

John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

Maybe I am a soft determinist who believes in some free will.  I will still call myself a libertarian but won't believe in the contradiction, of course.   Anyway, I am a liberal first who believes in few restrictions on what people can do.   I reckon there is no perfect label for me.   bill w

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAH%3D2ypVFcr8RZckXwrJQiW6_DcqGVf0wmvc1OzvLd%2Bw4YoXSpQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Stuart LaForge]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2021 at 9:59 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks to Godel and Turing we know that there are an infinite number of statements that are true but have no proof, that is to say there would be no way to show they are true in a finite number of steps.

 

That is actually a better justification for faith than is Pascal's wager.

 

> If one considers Turing machines that don't halt, then they must have infinite tape.

But even if a non-halting Turing machine had an infinite amount of tape it wouldn't matter because it still wouldn't be able to produce an answer to the problem it had been programmed to solve because it will never halt.

>> Any Turing machine that has halted and therefore produced a result has only used a finite amount of tape, and any Turing machine that is still working on a problem has also only used a finite amount of tape. You will never find a Turing machine that has used an infinite amount of tape.

> Simply because I will never find one does not mean such a thing does not, or will not exist.

A Turing Machine that requires an infinite amount of tape is an unsuccessful Turing machine that will not find the answer it has been programmed to find, not even if you gave it an eternal amount of time to work with.

 

But a Turing machine needs infinite tape to compute infinitely recursive functions like using the sieve of Eratosthenes to compute the set of prime numbers. The sieve is clearly computable, unlike the busy beaver function, but it nonetheless takes forever to complete, and if you want all the prime numbers, then you need infinite tape. 

 

> Other than Planck's constant, what is the difference between classical wave mechanics and quantum mechanics?

The fundamental difference between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics is that classical mechanics produces an exact answer which happens to be wrong, while Quantum Mechanics can only produce a probability that does however have the virtue of being correct. 

Classical mechanics does not produce the wrong answer, it produces an incomplete answer. Usually the expectation value of a quantum mechanical operator is equal to the classically calculated value of the parameter due to the Ehrenfest theorem and the correspondence principle. In other words, the classically computed value is usually the most probable of the Quantumly allowed values.

 

 Wave mechanics uses Schrodinger's wave equation to perform Quantum Mechanics, but there are other ways to do it, if you like you can forget about the quantum wave function entirely and do Quantum Mechanics with Heisenberg's matrix mechanics which Heisenberg invented a few months before Schrodinger came up with his wave equation. For most problems the mathematics is usually simpler with wave mechanics, but which you use is a matter of taste because both methods produce identical results.

But how does the Born rule work with matrix mechanics when there is no wave function?

>> the quantum wave function is not an observable quantity, only the square of the absolute value of the quantum wave function is an observable quantity, and even then it's only a probability.

>You could say almost the same thing about infinity. It is not an observable quantity either.You can only observe however much of it that intersects your light cone, and even then it is only a probability.

I don't know what you mean by that, "light cones" come from relativity and relativity is a classical theory, it produces definite answers not probabilities. 

What I was referring to was that one could observe an infinite phenomenon for one's entire life, but never be sure that it was actually infinite as opposed to simply longer-lived than you. You could only assign it a probability of being infinite.

Stuart LaForge

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jul 31, 2021 at 3:00 AM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Thanks to Godel and Turing we know that there are an infinite number of statements that are true but have no proof, that is to say there would be no way to show they are true in a finite number of steps.

 

> That is actually a better justification for faith than is Pascal's wager.

I admit it's better than Pascal's wager which is idiotic but it's still not very good because there are also an infinite number of statements that are faulse and therefore have no proof.

 

>> A Turing Machine that requires an infinite amount of tape is an unsuccessful Turing machine that will not find the answer it has been programmed to find, not even if you gave it an eternal amount of time to work with.

 

> But a Turing machine needs infinite tape to compute infinitely recursive functions

 

The multivalued Ackermann Function is infinitely recursive (but not primitive recursive, you can't use DO loops in the program) and it is a computable function, as long as the input values are finite the amount of tape needed to calculate it would also be finite, and for small numbers it's easy to calculate; A(1,2) is 4 and A(3,2) is 29, unfortunately the function grows rather rapidly so there is not nearly enough paper in the observable universe, or in a trillion universes, to print out the digits of  A(4,3) in base 10 decimal notation because the answer is (2^2^65536) -3, but that is still finite.

 

> like using the sieve of Eratosthenes to compute the set of prime numbers. The sieve is clearly computable, unlike the busy beaver function, but it nonetheless takes forever to complete, and if you want all the prime numbers, then you need infinite tape. 

It would be easy to program a Turing Machine to find the largest prime number and then halt, but such a machine will never halt, and a Turing machine that never halts is an unsuccessful Turing machine. 

 > if you want all the prime numbers, then you need infinite tape. 

Even if you had infinite tape it wouldn't help the machine in finding the largest prime number, if you claim that it had I could still use Euclid's 2500 year old proof to show that it had not.  

> Classical mechanics does not produce the wrong answer, it produces an incomplete answer.

According to classical physics the nuclear fusion that powers the sun is impossible because even the 15,000,000°C temperature at the center of the sun is far too cold for that to happen, positively charged Protons would repel each other and be moving too slowly to overcome their electrostatic repulsion and get close enough so that the short range Strong Nuclear Force could take over and allow the Protons to merge. Nuclear fusion is only possible because of Quantum Tunneling, even though classical physics says Protons don't have enough energy to overcome that electrostatic barrier Quantum Mechanics says that on very rare occasions and for a very short time (but long enough to get the job done) they do . The experiment to determine if Quantum Mechanics or Classical Mechanics is correct is very simple, one only needs to look upward into the daylight sky.

> Usually the expectation value of a quantum mechanical operator is equal to the classically calculated value of the parameter due to the Ehrenfest theorem and the correspondence principle. In other words, the classically computed value is usually the most probable of the Quantumly allowed values.

But there can be a huge difference between usually and always, classical physics only recognizes never and always, quantum mechanics says there is a huge amount of variation between those two extremes. In the sun an astronomical number of protons crash into each other many trillions of times a second, and even with quantum tunneling almost always the protons do not get close enough together for them to merge, that's why the sun will shine for billions of years, but on super rare occasions they do get close enough thanks to quantum tunneling, and those very very rare occasions are enough to power the sun.  But a typical Proton will smash into another Proton trillions of times a second for billions of years before at last as of quantum tunneling it finally gets close enough to merge.

>> Wave mechanics uses Schrodinger's wave equation to perform Quantum Mechanics, but there are other ways to do it, if you like you can forget about the quantum wave function entirely and do Quantum Mechanics with Heisenberg's matrix mechanics which Heisenberg invented a few months before Schrodinger came up with his wave equation. For most problems the mathematics is usually simpler with wave mechanics, but which you use is a matter of taste because both methods produce identical results.

> But how does the Born rule work with matrix mechanics when there is no wave function?

 

One reason matrix mechanics is not generally as popular as wave mechanics is there is nothing you can visualize, if you want to know what a quantum system will do you perform some experiments on it to obtain a certain set of numbers and then do some very complex mathematical manipulations on those numbers and then out pops a probability, the exact same probability that the Born Rule produces. Heisenberg insisted till the day he died that you shouldn't even try to visualize what's going on in the quantum world, you should just use experimentation to obtain the best observable quantities that you can and then use his mathematical recipe on those numbers to obtain a probability. He believed in the "shut up and calculate'' quantum interpretation, but there is no denying that his recipe works, and sometimes (although not usually) it's easier to use than wave mechanics.  

> What I was referring to was that one could observe an infinite phenomenon for one's entire life, but never be sure that it was actually infinite as opposed to simply longer-lived than you.

And if you observe a Turing machine that has been running for 50 years it might halt in the next second and produce an answer, or it might halt tomorrow, or I might halt in a billion years, or it might never stop, there's no way to tell, all you can do is watch it and wait, and you might be waiting forever.  

John K Clark

[Stuart LaForge]

On Wed, Jul 28, 2021 at 3:46 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jul 27, 2021 at 1:23 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> No matter what you told me, I'd try to find a cause somewhere. Just because you don't know it, doesn't make it random.   bill w

We know for certain through experiment  that Bell's Inequality is violated, therefore if you insist on retaining causality in all situations then you're gonna have to pay a very heavy price, the universe would have to be either unrealistic or non-local.

 Yes: reality, causality, or locality, one of them is false. For my part, I would discard locality. The very notion of a field is non-local. Action at a distance is what fundamental forces do.

 

Einstein disliked losing causality but Bell's inequality was discovered more than a decade after his death and I think he would have hated non-locality even more than non-causality, as for the universe being unrealistic I'm not sure what Einstein's position would have been if he'd known about Bell and the violation of his inequality that experimentation has found.

It is a shame that Einstein was so dismissive of Hugh Everett. Their theories mesh so well.

 

Non-locality means that 2 particles can influence each other instantly regardless of distance, and the strength of that influence is not weakened by distance, and that affect will change nothing between the two particles and be absolutely undetectable in the vast space between them, and there is nothing that transmits the intervening force between the two particles it just happens.

But it is a mistake to think of them as 2 separate particles when they are a single quantum state. It is a topological relationship (thanks for insight, Lawrence) and as such, it is not broken by geometric deformations like stretching the single quantum state over billions of light-years of space. Quantum states can be stretched as large as they need to be because they are more fundamental than space time.

It is as if you and I flipped an infinitely elastic coin and then, without looking, we each grabbed a side of the coin, took off in space ships, and stretched it into a light-years long cylinder. Whenever you or I finally got around to looking at our side of the coin, we would see heads or tails with probability .5 and instantly know what the other person got. The unobservable quantum wave function, which was always there evolving, is what bridges the gap, and influences the outcomes that we can see. Waves are by definition non-local. That is why a tsunami can affect more than one city at a time.

 

It seems to me that if the world was really non-local then it would be impossible to do science, in fact it would be impossible to make a prediction of any sort because; for example a solar flare on a star 10 billion light years away at the edge of the observable universe could have just as big an effect on the earth as a similar sized solar flare on our sun.

 

Quantum entanglement is not willy-nilly non-locality, it is non-locality governed by strict rules. Particles have to be spawned together or otherwise interact and develop a phase relationship in order to become entangled, so the distant star would have had to have interacted with the earth at some point in the past to be entangled with it now.

You'd have to know everything before you could know anything, your knowledge would have to be either total or zero, nothing in between.

 

No, because almost all the quantum weirdness cancels itself out on macroscopic scales. Non-locality is baked into the cake because superposition of states is fundamental to QM. A particle with a well defined momentum really is everywhere at once. Quantum particles are inherently non-local and therefore indistinguishable from one another and can exist in many places at once. Hence all electrons could be the same particle bouncing back and forth through time as suggested by Feynmann. Although electrons are probably better thought of as being separate vibrations in the same quantum field. 

Realism means a particle exists in one and only one form even if nobody has observed it. Hugh Everett's Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is NOT a realistic theory, and I personally think it is the best interpretation there is about what's really going on at the quantum level, or at least the best anybody has found so far.

How is MWI unrealistic? I think it is the most realistic interpretation out there. What do you think is a realistic interpretation? This specific instance of you becomes entangled with its particular observational history. But ultimately it is just a pattern formed of generic indistinguishable particles. Any number of instances of you could exist out there in phase space each of them entangled with their own observational histories.

 

Actually there is a very very small loophole in Bell's argument, the universe could be superdeterministic, but it is such a gross violation of Occam's razor I think the idea can be dismissed immediately. This briefly describes why I think the idea is ridiculous: 

The comic assumes that there is only one world. If all possible histories happen in their own causal entanglement networks or Everett branches, then in a sense, the multiverse uses branching parallel causation/determinism in addition to sequential causation/determinism. One cause can have multiple effects, a single effect can have multiple causes, and a particle can go through 2 slits at once and interfere with itself.

Stuart LaForge

[John Clark]

On Mon, Aug 2, 2021 at 4:51 AM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think it is the most realistic interpretation out there.

When I say Many Worlds is "unrealistic" it is not meant as an insult,  I am using the technical meaning of the word. My hunch is that Many Worlds is probably mostly correct, but I could be wrong. 

>> We know for certain through experiment  that Bell's Inequality is violated, therefore if you insist on retaining causality in all situations then you're gonna have to pay a very heavy price, the universe would have to be either unrealistic or non-local.

 > Yes: reality, causality, or locality, one of them is false.

At least one of them is false, 

> For my part, I would discard locality. The very notion of a field is non-local. Action at a distance is what fundamental forces do.

All other forces weaken with distance, the Strong Nuclear Force is barely long range enough to hold the atomic nucleus together, in fact for elements with very big nuclei it can't, that's why they're unstable, but your mysterious force is not weakened by distance. And every other force takes time to operate, but not this one, it works instantaneously regardless of distance, and for every other force if two particles influence each other they also will cause an influence to a particle in between them, but not this strange non local force.  

 

> It is a shame that Einstein was so dismissive of Hugh Everett. Their theories mesh so well.

You can't blame Einstein for that, he died in 1955 and Everett didn't publish his Many World's idea until 1957. I think if Einstein had known about Bell's inequality, which wasn't published until 1964 and the experimental confirmation that it was indeed violated that came about several decades later he would've thrown in the towel and admitted that the universe could not be completely deterministic, or at least it couldn't be deterministic unless a unrealistic theory like Everett's Many Worlds is true. You like Everett's idea and I do too, so we can have both locality and causality, or at least a version of them (you still can't transfer information faster than light, so Everett's predictions are compatible with the shut up and calculate people's predictions) , but we must give up on reality, the idea that an unobserved quantity exists in one and only one state.

 

>> Non-locality means that 2 particles can influence each other instantly regardless of distance, and the strength of that influence is not weakened by distance, and that affect will change nothing between the two particles and be absolutely undetectable in the vast space between them, and there is nothing that transmits the intervening force between the two particles it just happens.

> But it is a mistake to think of them as 2 separate particles when they are a single quantum state. 

Yes.

> It is as if you and I flipped an infinitely elastic coin and then, without looking, we each grabbed a side of the coin, took off in space ships, and stretched it into a light-years long cylinder. Whenever you or I finally got around to looking at our side of the coin, we would see heads or tails with probability .5 

 

Yes, but to each observer the coins would seem to be operating strictly according to the laws of random probability, they would only notice a strange correlation between the 2 coin flips if they communicated with each other, and that can only be done at the speed of light or less. So any theory based on the assumption that the coin flips were completely random would produce valid predictions, although they would produce probabilistic predictions not certain ones. 

> and instantly know what the other person got.

Yes, but that would be of no help in making a faster than light telegraph.  

> The unobservable quantum wave function, which was always there evolving, is what bridges the gap, and influences the outcomes that we can see.

Yes, it's a subtle point but important, 2 things can influence each other faster than light but that influence cannot be used to carry information

 

> Waves are by definition non-local.

No they are not.  Real waves weaken with distance and if they affect 2 points they also affect anything between those 2 points. And the quantum wave function is not a real wave, it is unobservable and involves complex numbers. To get something real that you can actually see you must square the amplitude of the Schrodinger Wave Equation of a particle at a point and that will give you the probability you will observe the particle at that point, and probability, unlike the wave equation, is something that you can observe and measure. And Schrodinger's equation has complex values, that means it has a "i"  (the square root of -1) in it, and that means very different quantum wave functions can give the exact same probability when you square it; and if X and Y both produce Z then things are not reversible, if you're in state Z there is no way to know if the previous state was X or Y. 

You get all sorts of strange stuff with i, like i^2=i^6 =-1 and i^4=i^100=1.  And in the macroscopic non quantum world if the probability of me flipping a coin and getting heads is 1/2 and the probability of you flipping a coin and getting heads is 1/2 then the probability of both you and me getting heads is 1/4, but in Quantum Mechanics that's not necessarily true because now you must deal with i and complex numbers. I think you could say that mathematically it's the existence of that damn  i in the Schrodinger Wave Equation that makes Quantum Mechanics so weird. 

 

> That is why a tsunami can affect more than one city at a time.

But that just proves the tsunami is local. If an earthquake in southern Chile causes a tsunami it could devastate Honolulu Hawaii but it would also have an effect on Tokyo, although a less severe one. It can't damage Tokyo and leave Honolulu untouched. And it can't affect either city instantaneously.

>> It seems to me that if the world was really non-local then it would be impossible to do science, in fact it would be impossible to make a prediction of any sort because; for example a solar flare on a star 10 billion light years away at the edge of the observable universe could have just as big an effect on the earth as a similar sized solar flare on our sun.

 

> Quantum entanglement is not willy-nilly non-locality, it is non-locality governed by strict rules.

And that's why we can make predictions, although they are just probabilistic ones; if the universe was realistic, and if everything affected everything instantaneously, and if the effect was not weakened by distance, I'll be damned if I can see how we could make a prediction of any sort unless we knew everything about everything. And we don't and never will, and yet we can make pretty good predictions, not perfect but pretty good. I think it's amazing that 3 pounds of gray goo inside a bone box is able to figure out anything at all about the vast universe. 

> Particles have to be spawned together or otherwise interact and develop a phase relationship in order to become entangled, so the distant star would have had to have interacted with the earth at some point in the past to be entangled with it now.

If the Inflationary Big Bang theory is correct, and most (but not all ) think it probably is, then all particles in the observable universe were at one time in contact with each other so things must be at least in some sense non-local, and yet we can still make pretty good predictions, so that means that whatever quantum interpretation turns out to be true it must be unrealistic.    

>> You'd have to know everything before you could know anything, your knowledge would have to be either total or zero, nothing in between.

 

> No, because almost all the quantum weirdness cancels itself out on macroscopic scales.

The experimentally derived fact that Bell's Inequality is violated is the very personification of quantum weirdness, so not all of it is canceled out. Whatever quantum interpretation turns out to be true you can be certain of one thing, it will be weird. Is Everett's Many Worlds theory weird enough to be true? I don't know, maybe, I can't think of anything weirder or better but maybe I'm just not smart enough. 

>> Realism means a particle exists in one and only one form even if nobody has observed it. Hugh Everett's Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is NOT a realistic theory, and I personally think it is the best interpretation there is about what's really going on at the quantum level, or at least the best anybody has found so far.

> How is MWI unrealistic?

A realistic interpretation says that an unpolarized photon existed in one and only one polarization even before it was observed by having it interact with a polarizer set at a particular angle, an unrealistic interpretation such as Many Worlds says that the photon exists in every polarization both before and after the interaction. And that's not just true for the photon, it's also true of the polarizer, it was set at every possible angle.

John K Clark     an archive of this list can be found at   Extropolis

tty8

[Stuart LaForge]

On Mon, Aug 2, 2021 at 5:49 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Aug 2, 2021 at 4:51 AM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think it is the most realistic interpretation out there.

When I say Many Worlds is "unrealistic" it is not meant as an insult,  I am using the technical meaning of the word.

I realize that, unfortunately, the word "real" has three different technical meanings between the disciplines of math, physics, and philosophy.

 

>> We know for certain through experiment  that Bell's Inequality is violated, therefore if you insist on retaining causality in all situations then you're gonna have to pay a very heavy price, the universe would have to be either unrealistic or non-local.

 > Yes: reality, causality, or locality, one of them is false.

At least one of them is false, 

> For my part, I would discard locality. The very notion of a field is non-local. Action at a distance is what fundamental forces do.

All other forces weaken with distance, the Strong Nuclear Force is barely long range enough to hold the atomic nucleus together, in fact for elements with very big nuclei it can't, that's why they're unstable, but your mysterious force is not weakened by distance. And every other force takes time to operate, but not this one, it works instantaneously regardless of distance, and for every other force if two particles influence each other they also will cause an influence to a particle in between them, but not this strange non local force.

I didn't say it was a force. I just used forces as an example of a non-local phenomenon. The basis of entanglement is not a force, it is information. Because quantum states are more fundamental than space-time, it is not a local hidden variable but a global hidden variable. A classical example similar to a global hidden variable would be the spin direction of the milky way galaxy relative to galactic north. It can only have two directions clockwise or anticlockwise. And when you measure it, the answer you obtain instantaneously reveals the direction of star orbits on opposite ends of the galaxy which are 10^5 light years apart. No influence travels anywhere, the information just exists in all those places at once because that single bit of information applies to the whole galaxy.

And if a classical bit can instantaneously apply to an entire galaxy, then a qubit can transcend any amount of space time. 

> Waves are by definition non-local.

No they are not.  Real waves weaken with distance and if they affect 2 points they also affect anything between those 2 points. And the quantum wave function is not a real wave, it is unobservable and involves complex numbers.

See what I mean about the word real? It is a slippery word in a chaotic world. Complex on the other hand is a perfectly good description of where matter meets mind. Complexity is part reality and part imagination just like conscious experience and the wave equation.

 

To get something real that you can actually see you must square the amplitude of the Schrodinger Wave Equation of a particle at a point and that will give you the probability you will observe the particle at that point, and probability, unlike the wave equation, is something that you can observe and measure.

Yes, if you run enough trials and have enough data, then the results converge weakly (non-monotonically) toward the square of the amplitude of the Schrodinger Wave Equation. Just like an interference pattern can be built one spot at a time by particles long gone by the time one gets around to looking at them.  

And Schrodinger's equation has complex values, that means it has a "i"  (the square root of -1) in it, and that means very different quantum wave functions can give the exact same probability when you square it; and if X and Y both produce Z then things are not reversible, if you're in state Z there is no way to know if the previous state was X or Y.

The same thing can be said about Conway's game of life and many other CAs. And the pixels clearly are off or on whether you watch them or not. Life is both real and deterministic but it can be run anywhere and a given seed pattern will give rise to the same result no matter where it is run. 

 

>> Realism means a particle exists in one and only one form even if nobody has observed it. Hugh Everett's Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is NOT a realistic theory, and I personally think it is the best interpretation there is about what's really going on at the quantum level, or at least the best anybody has found so far.

> How is MWI unrealistic?

A realistic interpretation says that an unpolarized photon existed in one and only one polarization even before it was observed by having it interact with a polarizer set at a particular angle, an unrealistic interpretation such as Many Worlds says that the photon exists in every polarization both before and after the interaction. And that's not just true for the photon, it's also true of the polarizer, it was set at every possible angle.

How do Many Worlds or experiments distinguish between "all possible polarizations"  and an exact polarization angle of 45 degrees? Seems to me, superposition of "all possible angles" is indistinguishable by the formalism from a preset angle of 45 degrees since you get the same intensity of polarized light coming out from a single polarizing filter as you do from two filters set at 45 degree angle to one another. Malus's Law suggests that 45 degrees is the default "real-valued" polarization of so-called unpolarized light.

Stuart LaForge

 

[John Clark]

On Thu, Aug 12, 2021 at 1:01 AM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

>> All other forces weaken with distance, the Strong Nuclear Force is barely long range enough to hold the atomic nucleus together, in fact for elements with very big nuclei it can't, that's why they're unstable, but your mysterious force is not weakened by distance. And every other force takes time to operate, but not this one, it works instantaneously regardless of distance, and for every other force if two particles influence each other they also will cause an influence to a particle in between them, but not this strange non local force.

>I didn't say it was a force. I just used forces as an example of a non-local phenomenon. The basis of entanglement is not a force, it is information.

If entanglement involves the transfer of information then it could be used to construct a faster than light telegraph, and it can't be. And if it's a force it's very unlike any other force ever discovered, I'm not sure there is a word in the English language to describe exactly what entanglement is, but it's certainly something.  

 

> Because quantum states are more fundamental than space-time, it is not a local hidden variable but a global hidden variable. A classical example similar to a global hidden variable would be the spin direction of the milky way galaxy relative to galactic north.

We find the spin axis of distant galaxies can be oriented in any direction, but if they behave the same way that electrons do then whenever astronomers set up their instruments to see if the axis of the galaxy rotated around an axis oriented at angle X  they would ALWAYS find that it did, and the rotation was either clockwise or counterclockwise around that axis. If for the first time 300 years ago an astronomer decided to find out what the spin axis of the Andromeda galaxy was oriented at and on a whim decided to start his long search by seeing if the galaxy was  oriented at  37.9° or not, and so he set his Galaxy rotation instrument to  37.9°, and to his surprise he found the galaxy was rotating about an axis oriented at exactly 37.9°. And he didn't just get lucky with Andromeda, he would guess the correct angle for an axis on his first try for every galaxy in the sky, the galaxy was always rotating clockwise or counterclockwise around that axis.  And even today if astronomers set their galaxy rotation instrument at the same angle that the ancient astronomer had they would find that he was always correct, but if they set their instrument at an angle that was different by 45° they would find that old astronomer was only right half the time, and if they set it off by 90° they would find that the old astronomer was NEVER correct. However galaxies don't work that way, but electrons and photons do.

>> Schrodinger's equation has complex values, that means it has a "i"  (the square root of -1) in it, and that means very different quantum wave functions can give the exact same probability when you square it; and if X and Y both produce Z then things are not reversible, if you're in state Z there is no way to know if the previous state was X or Y.

> The same thing can be said about Conway's game of life and many other CAs.

One cell in Conway's Life game cannot affect a distant cell without also affecting cells in between, but quantum entanglement can affect something without affecting anything in between. 

> And the pixels clearly are off or on whether you watch them or not.

Yes, so Conway's Life is realistic, a cell always exists in one and only one state, the same thing may or may not be true for electrons depending on if the correct quantum interpretation turns out to be realistic or not. As I said before, Many Worlds is not realistic, but I think it's probably true, or at least more true than its competitors.   

> Life is both real and deterministic

Conway's Life is deterministic in the forward direction but not in the backward. Given any Life pattern you can always predict what the next generation will look like, but given any life pattern you can NOT always figure out what the previous pattern was because sometimes two very different patterns can produce identical results. 

>>A realistic interpretation says that an unpolarized photon existed in one and only one polarization even before it was observed by having it interact with a polarizer set at a particular angle, an unrealistic interpretation such as Many Worlds says that the photon exists in every polarization both before and after the interaction. And that's not just true for the photon, it's also true of the polarizer, it was set at every possible angle.

> How do Many Worlds or experiments distinguish between "all possible polarizations"  and an exact polarization angle of 45 degrees? Seems to me, superposition of "all possible angles" is indistinguishable by the formalism from a preset angle of 45 degrees since you get the same intensity of polarized light coming out from a single polarizing filter as you do from two filters set at 45 degree angle to one another. Malus's Law suggests that 45 degrees is the default "real-valued" polarization of so-called unpolarized light. Malus's Law suggests that 45 degrees is the default "real-valued" polarization of so-called unpolarized light.

 

It's been known by experiment for a long time that the amount of light polarized at 0 degrees that will make it through a polarizing filter set at X degrees is [COS (x)]^2;  for example if x = 30 DEGREES then the value is .75; if light is made of photons that translates to the probability any individual photon will make it through the filter is 75%. However if if ANY local hidden variable theory is true Bell proved that the probability must be less than or equal to 66.66%,  3/4 is greater than 2/3, so Bell's inequality is violated. So Malus's Law cannot be explained by local hidden variables.

John K Clark 

[Stuart LaForge]

Yes, the violation of Bell's inequality rules out local hidden variables (LHV). I get that. But in a multiverse, everything is non-local; everything repeats periodically like a wave. So why not ditch locality? What I am suggesting is that the universe is non-local as suggested by MWI, eternal inflation, causal cells, string theory etc. Furthermore, violations of Bell's theorem do not rule out global or universal hidden variables (UHV). So perhaps whenever you choose a basis vector for a test of Bell's inequality, you are selecting which universe you are observing, and in that universe unpolarized light is always universally polarized at x = 45 degrees to whatever basis you chose for your polarizing filter. In addition, any entangled photons in that universe will be polarized to exactly the same angle as its partner.

Note that (COS(x))^2 = 1/2 for x = 45 degrees, which is also the fraction of "unpolarized" light that makes it through a single polarizing filter to emerge polarized to whatever basis you chose. This suggests that 45 degrees is the default polarization of photons before they are passed through any polarizing filters that can change their polarization. And the angle you choose to set your polarizer to, or choice of basis, determines which universe you will observe. Although in order for this to be true, one would have to accept that it is possible to observe different universes through each of your two eyes, if for example, your wore differently aligned polaroid lenses for each eye.

Another way to think about it is that unpolarized light cannot be a superposition of all possible polarizations at once because we can directly observe unpolarized light but quantum mechanics prohibits super-positions to be directly observed.

Another line of reasoning is that light follows null geodesics so the space-time interval between the emission and observation of a photon is zero as is the proper time of the photon. How can something that does not experience time have any changeable properties, like polarization, at all? Maybe polarization filters don't change photon polarizations, maybe they change the universe you observe.

Stuart LaForge

     

Virus-free. www.avast.com

[John Clark]

On Sat, Aug 14, 2021 at 7:03 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

 > why not ditch locality?

If things were non-local, if something that happened in the Andromeda galaxy could instantly affect the movement of a billiard ball that is right in front of me right now and do so just as strongly as if it occurred right next to it, and if that billiard ball could in turn immediately affect that thing in the Andromeda galaxy, and if everything else in the universe could do the same thing just as strongly in quickly regardless of if it was 10 nanometers away from the billiard ball or 10 billion light years away, then I don't see how in the world I could possibly make even an approximate prediction of what that billiard ball would do when I hit it with my pool cue.  And yet the fact is somehow I can make a pretty good prediction about what that ball will do I hit it. That's why Einstein disliked non-causality but he REALLY hated the idea of non-locality.

> Note that (COS(x))^2 = 1/2 for x = 45 degrees, which is also the fraction of "unpolarized" light that makes it through a single polarizing filter to emerge polarized to whatever basis you chose. This suggests that 45 degrees is the default polarization of photons before they are passed through any polarizing filters

But X is only 45° relative to some zero reference point, and that 0° point is picked entirely at random, so before the measurement was made the wave did not exist in one and only one polarization, so things can't be realistic.  And if you set a second polarizer to that same random angle then there is a 100% chance the photon will make it through the filter, and if you set it an angle offset by 90° there is a 0% chance the photo will make it through, and if you set it to an angle offset by 45° of that random angle there is a 50% chance the photon will make it through. The Many Worlds quantum interpretation is certainly weird, but I think it's the least weird quantum interpretation that can explain such bizarre behavior seen in the natural world.

 

 > And the angle you choose to set your polarizer to, or choice of basis, determines which universe you will observe.

If Many Worlds is correct then it does even more than that, it determines which of the many many Stuart LaForges is the "you" that sees the polarizing filter set at angle X. That means that before the experiment was conducted neither the light wave, or the polarizing filter, or "you", existed in one and only one definite state; and that means Many Worlds cannot be a realistic theory.  

> Another way to think about it is that unpolarized light cannot be a superposition of all possible polarizations at once because we can directly observe unpolarized light

Sure, but if you don't have a polarizer then you don't know how the light was polarized, you only know there was a beam of photons of some unknown polarization.

> but quantum mechanics prohibits super-positions to be directly observed.

And no superposition is observed, "you" observe photons but unless a polarizer is used "you" can't know what angle they are polarized at, and if "you" do use a polarizer then "you" see that it was in one and only one state; but now if Many Worlds is correct then there are lots and lots of "yous" all finding one and only one polarization, but all finding different polarizations. It's the same with a film camera, film cannot determine the polarization of a photon unless a polarizer is in front of the camera lens. So if a photon with every polarization hits photographic film it will leave an identical mark on that film in every universe regardless of the polarization of the photon, and if every universe is identical and all the "yous"  in every universe see the same thing, and and none of the "yous" knows what the polarization of the photon was, then it would be meaningless to say the universe has split. For a universe to split there must be a difference between them.

> Another line of reasoning is that light follows null geodesics so the space-time interval between the emission and observation of a photon is zero as is the proper time of the photon. How can something that does not experience time have any changeable properties, like polarization, at all?

A better question to ask is, if the universe is non-local and everything in it can affect everything else in it instantly, then how can time exist for anything in the universe including human beings?  

 

Maybe polarization filters don't change photon polarizations, maybe they change the universe you observe.

 

Yes but polarizers can also change the "you" that does the observing, because there is nothing special about personal pronouns, the polarizer splits them just like everything else.  So each "you" sees the photon in one and only one state, and all of the "yous" sees a different state, and none of the "yous" sees a superposition of all possible states.

John K Clark