unbeliever Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 Even if I agreed that you had proved radioactive decay was non deterministic I don't see how that proves the same of a coin toss. A coin is made of atoms. As is the air it flies through, the human who tosses it and the air it passes through. Things made of very many atoms appear deterministic because there are so many atoms involved that the randomness gets lost in the haze of human perception. If you get down to a few atoms or smaller it's much easier to see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flamingjimmy Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 [Quarks are] single fundamental particle with no substructure at all. ...that we know of. 100 years ago you'd have said the same about atoms. Could be turtles all the way down! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyclone Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 Lacking the ability to predict something doesn't mean the outcome is uncertain or random. For it to be random the outcome would have to be different each time you start form the same point. There is zero evidence to suggest that rewinding the universe to a given point in time would result in a different outcome. Everything that happens is causally determined by preceding events and natural laws. No, so far as we known various quantum behaviours and amongst others radioactive decay are random. They are not caused or triggered by preceding events. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unbeliever Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 Infinite is often used to denote an extremely large number. I agree there was no reason but it was the only possible outcome based on the previous events, it couldn't have happened any differently without altering the start conditions. A deterministic system doesn't have to be uniform. A deterministic model will always produce the same output from a given starting condition or initial state but the outcome can appear chaotic and random. What random events, each event although it may appear to be random is determined by all impervious events. You would not be able to replicate the start conditions for you experiment, each time you start the start condition will be different, which would mean you are likley to get different results. A deterministic universe has to have a memory. If the same things are to happen at the same times in a re-run, the grand plan must be passed down from the beginning of the universe to every single subatomic particle in the current state of the universe. There's no way for that to happen and all our observations show that it doesn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyclone Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 There are no "natural laws" in our observable universe. Newtons "Laws" are very, very good but they are not "laws" as they do not apply to all situations: On Earth we know that different outcomes are possible from the same starting point-Chaos Theory. Universal-Different outcomes always occur depending on the relative positions of the observed and the observation- Relativity. "Everything that happens" is not measurable. Chaos theory doesn't mean what you think. It just means that a system is so sensitive to starting conditions or minute variation that we are unable to model it. We call it chaotic. And there are definitely laws, the equations we use to represent them are our best approximations to these laws. But there are fundamental processes that appear (as far as we can tell) to be entirely random. ---------- Post added 21-07-2015 at 13:39 ---------- A deterministic universe has to have a memory. If the same things are to happen at the same times in a re-run, the grand plan must be passed down from the beginning of the universe to every single subatomic particle in the current state of the universe. There's no way for that to happen and all our observations show that it doesn't. That wouldn't be the case. To be deterministic it would have to have natural laws with no randomness inherent in them. Set it going from a given state and it would by execution of these laws always follow the same path. This doesn't seem to be the case though. ---------- Post added 21-07-2015 at 13:41 ---------- Even if I agreed that you had proved radioactive decay was non deterministic I don't see how that proves the same of a coin toss. ...that we know of. ...that we know of. That a coin toss could be deterministic isn't evidence that everything is... Macro level events would generally be said to be deterministic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natie Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 The 2 atoms in this experiment are absolutely identical. They have no way of being different. We can to still further to even simpler particles which decay. A muon is essentially a heavy electron. It's average spontaneous decay time is 2.2 micro seconds. If you watch one, it will decay into an electron and a couple of neutrinos in an average time of 2.2 micro seconds, but some will decay much more quickly and some much more slowly like an atomic nucleus. This is a single fundamental particle with no substructure at all. All muons have the same electrical charge, the same mass etc etc. How could the time taken for a muon to decay be deterministic. You can't really think that if you ran the universe over again the same muons would decay in the same time. How would they know to do that? There's no way to store information in a muon. A deterministic universe has to have a memory. If the same things are to happen at the same times in a re-run, the grand plan must be passed down from the beginning of the universe to every single subatomic particle in the current state of the universe. There's no way for that to happen and all our observations show that it doesn't. Why do you think that a deterministic universe would need a memory, it doesn't need to remember what it did to do the same again if we could rewind it. Everything will simply react the same as it did on the previous occasion providing the start conditions are identical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flamingjimmy Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 That a coin toss could be deterministic isn't evidence that everything is... Macro level events would generally be said to be deterministic. Agree on both points. Do you think that we can prove randomness exists in the universe? I notice you dropping 'so far as we know' qualifiers in when you speak of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyclone Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 And even less evidence to suggest it would be different if we could, the universe is that ordered that scientists even predict the end of it, assuming that they are right. And yet they can't accurately predict the weather tomorrow... If you accept that quantum events are random and radioactive decay and other fundamental behaviours. Then it follows that if the universe experiment were re-run, the outcome would be different. Because early on these fundamental behaviours (that we are accepting for the moment are random) would have huge implications for how things developed subsequently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unbeliever Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 Why do you think that a deterministic universe would need a memory, it doesn't need to remember what it did to do the same again if we could rewind it. Everything will simply react the same as it did on the previous occasion providing the start conditions are identical. No it wouldn't. A muon has no way to react to outside influences to somehow cause it to decay and no way of storing information about previous events in the universe that went into its formation. How does it know when to decay? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natie Posted July 21, 2015 Share Posted July 21, 2015 No, so far as we known various quantum behaviours and amongst others radioactive decay are random. They are not caused or triggered by preceding events. And we don't know everything, how do you know that radioactive decays isn't affected by something you don't yet know about. 2 identical experiments conducted 1 second apart aren't identical experiments, because the earth and moving round the sun, the solar system is moving round the galaxy, the galaxy is moving through the universe. So each run of the experiment will be different. ---------- Post added 21-07-2015 at 13:47 ---------- A deterministic universe has to have a memory. If the same things are to happen at the same times in a re-run, the grand plan must be passed down from the beginning of the universe to every single subatomic particle in the current state of the universe. There's no way for that to happen and all our observations show that it doesn't. No it doesn't and it also doesn't need a creator or intelligence., it just needs to do the same from the same start point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now