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Wow, this discussion is going nowhere fast. > First, he was wrong I agree. And that's completely and totally irrelevant. I have no idea why you even mention i

by pluto9 8y ago

Wow, this discussion is going nowhere fast. > First, he was wrong I agree. And that's completely and totally irrelevant. I have no idea why you even mention it. Obviously what matters is that his meaning is clear. > Second, he said that in a very different culture. This isn't the 1920s. So your objection to GP's phrasing, in spite of it being completely inoffensive and having a perfectly clear meaning, is "because it's $CURRENT_YEAR".

akvadrako 8y ago
Totally irrelevant but I wouldn’t agree Einstein was wrong. QM without collapse is actually a fully deterministic theory. And it makes sense that the universe doesn’t play dice - because there is no source of randomness available. It’s a functional language.
- pluto9 8y ago
  Yes, I suppose saying Einstein was wrong is too strong. It's more correct to say there's no evidence (so far) that he was right. Quantum collapse certainly appears random, but if we eventually find a deterministic cause, Einstein will be vindicated. It's impossible to prove that a process is random. > there is no source of randomness available I think that's going beyond what we can be sure of. We have no evidence that there is randomness, be we also have no evidence that there isn't. QM may be fully deterministic if we disregard collapse, but as far as I'm aware, we can't do that. Collapse is still something we have to contend with given the current state of our knowledge.
  - akvadrako 8y ago
    I say there is no source of randomness because the universe is a closed system by definition. In this case by universe I mean all of existence. And closed systems cannot create randomness - it always comes from somewhere. I suppose we can't rule out collapse totally, but we also can't rule out fairies pushing atoms around. It's just that there is no evidence for collapse, so it seems we can ignore it.
    - pluto9 8y ago
      The statement "closed systems cannot create randomness" is only true if you assume those closed systems don't feature random collapse. But if the collapse itself is the source of randomness, then no external input is required, and the system is closed.
      - FeepingCreature 8y ago
        From an Occam perspective, a universe with fundamental randomness requires an unbounded amount of arbitrary data to specify. Deterministic theories are thus massively advantaged.
        pluto9 8y ago
        I don't see how. The amount of information needed to specify the current state of a system (the universe) does not depend on how that state was arrived at. It takes one bit of information to specify that a coin is tails-up, regardless of whether it was placed that way deliberately or got that way as a result of a random coin toss.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        kybernetikos 8y ago
        It's possible that a deterministic universe might be specifiable in many fewer bits than the bits required for a complete description of its current state. For example if you know you're in a universe where coins always land tail up then you need 0 bits to store that state.
        pluto9 8y ago
        That's a special case where the universe's state never changes. Any universe that changes over time requires information to encode the current state. Of course you could make a similar claim about a universe where coin flips always alternate--current state is merely a function of time and initial conditions, and therefore no information is needed to store it. But then you're saying that deterministic universes contain no information at all except their initial state. That's fine, but I personally wouldn't put an axiom like that on the winning side of Occam's razor.
stochastic_monk 8y ago
I am providing context as to why the statement at the center of this is confusing. It still strikes me as putting an unshared perspective onto a concept in a way that doesn’t make sense to me as well as the person to which you were replying. If you continue to disagree, feel free to, but the core premise makes little sense to me.

by pluto9 8y ago

akvadrako 8y ago

Totally irrelevant but I wouldn’t agree Einstein was wrong. QM without collapse is actually a fully deterministic theory. And it makes sense that the universe doesn’t play dice - because there is no source of randomness available. It’s a functional language.

pluto9 8y ago
Yes, I suppose saying Einstein was wrong is too strong. It's more correct to say there's no evidence (so far) that he was right. Quantum collapse certainly appears random, but if we eventually find a deterministic cause, Einstein will be vindicated. It's impossible to prove that a process is random. > there is no source of randomness available I think that's going beyond what we can be sure of. We have no evidence that there is randomness, be we also have no evidence that there isn't. QM may be fully deterministic if we disregard collapse, but as far as I'm aware, we can't do that. Collapse is still something we have to contend with given the current state of our knowledge.
- akvadrako 8y ago
  I say there is no source of randomness because the universe is a closed system by definition. In this case by universe I mean all of existence. And closed systems cannot create randomness - it always comes from somewhere. I suppose we can't rule out collapse totally, but we also can't rule out fairies pushing atoms around. It's just that there is no evidence for collapse, so it seems we can ignore it.
  - pluto9 8y ago
    The statement "closed systems cannot create randomness" is only true if you assume those closed systems don't feature random collapse. But if the collapse itself is the source of randomness, then no external input is required, and the system is closed.
    - FeepingCreature 8y ago
      From an Occam perspective, a universe with fundamental randomness requires an unbounded amount of arbitrary data to specify. Deterministic theories are thus massively advantaged.
      - pluto9 8y ago
        I don't see how. The amount of information needed to specify the current state of a system (the universe) does not depend on how that state was arrived at. It takes one bit of information to specify that a coin is tails-up, regardless of whether it was placed that way deliberately or got that way as a result of a random coin toss.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        kybernetikos 8y ago
        It's possible that a deterministic universe might be specifiable in many fewer bits than the bits required for a complete description of its current state. For example if you know you're in a universe where coins always land tail up then you need 0 bits to store that state.
        pluto9 8y ago
        That's a special case where the universe's state never changes. Any universe that changes over time requires information to encode the current state. Of course you could make a similar claim about a universe where coin flips always alternate--current state is merely a function of time and initial conditions, and therefore no information is needed to store it. But then you're saying that deterministic universes contain no information at all except their initial state. That's fine, but I personally wouldn't put an axiom like that on the winning side of Occam's razor.

stochastic_monk 8y ago

I am providing context as to why the statement at the center of this is confusing. It still strikes me as putting an unshared perspective onto a concept in a way that doesn’t make sense to me as well as the person to which you were replying. If you continue to disagree, feel free to, but the core premise makes little sense to me.