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Doesn't "clockwork" imply that true randomness can't exist and quantum physics tell us that it does?

by tux1968 9y ago

throwaway91111 9y ago
I don't think clockwork implies determinism, only that rational actors can understand cause and effect in the system. Much like a window into clockwork. That said, i do appreciate the horror of being a wound up automaton, but i think this is a mistake to think of humans as primarily rational. Hubris, even, might be a good name for it. We are influenced by thousands of arbitrary signals every day and react in mostly normal ways; this doesn't seem to scare people at all. That is: even if we have a full mechanism of free will, we don't have functional free will, as humans are clearly influenced by many unconscious factors. I'd have to look at Jefferson's writings again to confirm, but i thought "god" in a deism sense was portrayed, in many senses, as a scientist himself watching the progress of the universe, not an author laying out a grand, anthropomorphic, meaning-laden story. That is: even the clockwork deists were not explicitly deterministic!
Xcelerate 9y ago
> true randomness can't exist and quantum physics tell us that it does? Not necessarily. Quantum physics says that certain things are unpredictable. I consider indeterminism separate from the "truly random", with the former being generated via an algorithm and the latter being produced via no algorithm whatsoever. It may be the case that since the measuring system (the experimenter) is necessarily entangled with the measured system, the information needed to perfectly predict eigenstate selection is inaccessible, and thus appears perfectly random, since it is formally unpredictable. What would be interesting though is if someone devised an experiment to ascertain whether eigenstate selection is predictable in a universal sense although not necessarily predictable to us since we're part of the system that is being predicted. How such an experiment would be devised is beyond me though.
- whatshisface 9y ago
  Well, here's an argument in favor of true randomess: If there was a PRNG deciding the outcome of measurements, it would have to have the mathematical moving parts exist somewhere as hidden variables. Hidden variables are outlawed by Bell's theorem and a couple of other things. Therefore, the randomness must be stateless and truly random.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - Xcelerate 9y ago
    > Hidden variables are outlawed by Bell's theorem Local hidden variables. I see nothing wrong with non-locality; it's basically been confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt by now. That "closeness" occurs within Hilbert space rather than its projection into position space is ultimately no problem for a PRNG.

Doesn't "clockwork" imply that true randomness can't exist and quantum physics tell us that it does?

I don't think clockwork implies determinism, only that rational actors can understand cause and effect in the system. Much like a window into clockwork. That said, i do appreciate the horror of being a wound up automaton, but i think this is a mistake to think of humans as primarily rational. Hubris, even, might be a good name for it. We are influenced by thousands of arbitrary signals every day and react in mostly normal ways; this doesn't seem to scare people at all. That is: even if we have a full mechanism of free will, we don't have functional free will, as humans are clearly influenced by many unconscious factors. I'd have to look at Jefferson's writings again to confirm, but i thought "god" in a deism sense was portrayed, in many senses, as a scientist himself watching the progress of the universe, not an author laying out a grand, anthropomorphic, meaning-laden story. That is: even the clockwork deists were not explicitly deterministic!

Xcelerate 9y ago

> true randomness can't exist and quantum physics tell us that it does? Not necessarily. Quantum physics says that certain things are unpredictable. I consider indeterminism separate from the "truly random", with the former being generated via an algorithm and the latter being produced via no algorithm whatsoever. It may be the case that since the measuring system (the experimenter) is necessarily entangled with the measured system, the information needed to perfectly predict eigenstate selection is inaccessible, and thus appears perfectly random, since it is formally unpredictable. What would be interesting though is if someone devised an experiment to ascertain whether eigenstate selection is predictable in a universal sense although not necessarily predictable to us since we're part of the system that is being predicted. How such an experiment would be devised is beyond me though.

whatshisface 9y ago
Well, here's an argument in favor of true randomess: If there was a PRNG deciding the outcome of measurements, it would have to have the mathematical moving parts exist somewhere as hidden variables. Hidden variables are outlawed by Bell's theorem and a couple of other things. Therefore, the randomness must be stateless and truly random.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Xcelerate 9y ago
  > Hidden variables are outlawed by Bell's theorem Local hidden variables. I see nothing wrong with non-locality; it's basically been confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt by now. That "closeness" occurs within Hilbert space rather than its projection into position space is ultimately no problem for a PRNG.