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> it's modern scientific dogma that the world is deterministic Really? Maybe I've lost touch with dogma while working to complete my physics PhD with one of the
by helpComputer 9y ago
> it's modern scientific dogma that the world is deterministic
Really? Maybe I've lost touch with dogma while working to complete my physics PhD with one of the big LHC experiments, but this sounds hyperbolic to me. Could you explain?
> Even if you take into account quantum uncertainty, as Hawking points out, it is determined probabilities.
That the probabilities are governed (determined?) by precise equations doesn't mean that quantum mechanics isn't stochastic; it gives us only probabilities. The indeterminacy principle is a better better name than the uncertainty principle. But perhaps I'm misunderstanding you.
- codeulike 9y agoEven if the universe is deterministic, its future is still unknowable, as in to predict the future of the universe you would need something to simulate every subatomic particle of all matter etc and so doing that computation would need something bigger than the universe. I like to think of the universe as a deterministic computer that is calculating its own outcome - there is no shortcut to jump to the end.
- chriswarbo 9y ago> I like to think of the universe as a deterministic computer that is calculating its own outcome - there is no shortcut to jump to the end. I've mostly heard this dubbed "computational irreducibility" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_irreducibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_irreducibility
- nasredin 9y ago>I like to think of the universe as a deterministic computer that is calculating its own outcome - there is no shortcut to jump to the end. I hope there's no bugs in it then!
- setr 9y agoIf there is no one to determine "correct" behavior, then there can be no bugs. If the universe crashes one day due to a mishandled null atom, we'll just have to take it as correct behavior (too bad for us!)
- amasad 9y agoCausality. We know that everything follows a cause-and-effect model. And if you're a physicalist -- philosophical term that you believed the world doesn't have any supernatural forces -- then, leaving aside quantum uncertainty for a second, the next state of the universe is determined by all the previous ones. They didn't teach you in your physics PhD that stochastic != Undetermined. We may not know how to predict stochastic processes but that doesn't mean they don't follow cause-and-effect.