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
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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
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 wDeterminism 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----
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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.
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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
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> 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.
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.
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> Just what is an 'undetermined' event'? bill w
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> 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.
> There has to be a reason why one particle gets released and another one doesn't.
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> You can’t control your actions IF they are determined.
> If actions are determined, then there’s no such thing as guilt
On Jul 19, 2021, at 12:01 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
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> 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,
> 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.
> there’s nothing we can do about it.
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>> I am aware of no law of logic that demands every event have a cause. John K Clark
> My own mind demands it.
Just what is an 'undetermined' event'? bill w
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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.
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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 BallardOn 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 guiltNonsense. 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
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Stathis Papaioannouunderstood what undetermined behaviour would entail.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
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----
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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
On Jul 19, 2021, at 10:06 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:
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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 BallardOn 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.
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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.
On Jul 20, 2021, at 2:37 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:
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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?
> 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
> 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?
> A bit silly, no?
>You can’t build a functional society on the idea that people have no control over their actions.
> How could such a society function?
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
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.
> 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.
>My point was there are different perspectives based on what one thinks is fundamental here.
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
On Jul 21, 2021, at 3:33 PM, Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:
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> 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".
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> 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
John K ClarkAre those your examples of quantum effects in the real world? bill w
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> 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 wWith 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:If you'd rather have random colors you can see them here:If you want to listen to randomness you can hear it here:Random bernoulli noiseAnd if you want to know how the hardware randomness generator that did all of this works you can find out here:John K Clark
> Are those your examples of quantum effects in the real world? bill w
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.
>> 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,
> 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.
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> Please explain random behavior.
> We say things like 'for no reason at all' but that is not to be taken literally
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 coffeebill w
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
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.
>> 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 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.
>> 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.
> Other than Planck's constant, what is the difference between classical wave mechanics and quantum mechanics?
>> 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.
>> 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.
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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
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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.
--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----
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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
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Can you give me a link to this libertarian random free will idea? Thanks! bill w
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> 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
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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 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.
>> 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.
>> 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.
> if you want all the prime numbers, then you need infinite tape.
> 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?
> 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.
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 wWe 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:
> I think it is the most realistic interpretation out there.
>> 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.
> 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 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.
>> 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?
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.
>> 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.
> 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.
>> 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.
>> 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.
>> 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
>>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.
> why not ditch 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
> And the angle you choose to set your polarizer to, or choice of basis, determines which universe you will observe.
> 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.