6 ms·

I think the problem with QM isn't the fact that the probabilities are confusingly calculated. It's that there's no underlying mechanism. Imagine I flip a fair

I think the problem with QM isn't the fact that the probabilities are confusingly calculated. It's that there's no underlying mechanism. Imagine I flip a fair coin. The odds of you guessing it correctly are 50%. In your mind, you know it's probabilistic. Simultaneously, you imagine that if you had more information you could get it right more than 50% of the time. Maybe if you new the force or the initial velocity, that'd help. The thing with QM, there's no more information to get. You can't get better than 50%, ever. It's basically magic. The problem with any deterministic model is that it adds more complexity than just assuming magic and we can't test any of the predictions of current deterministic models so why bother.

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
That's a key point - classical randomness is still causal. QM effectively seems to be non-causal - or at least, much less causal. Tidying this away under the heading of "It's probabilistic, let's just do the math and not worry about why" seems to be ignoring some very basic questions. I can't seriously imagine Newton saying "Well, the Moon stays in the sky instead of falling down - and that's frankly a bit weird, but I'm not going to wonder why because it's just a mystery and anyway, I can predict its orbit with these epicycles."
- rusk 8y ago
  > I can't seriously imagine Newton saying .. But he did. He called it Gravity. He didn't let figuring out "how gravity works" hold him back. He just figured out the equations that predict its effects based on observation. The unknowns happened to conveniently coalesce around a single constant G, but that doesn't make them "known". [IANAP - do we have any convincing popularly accessible models for how gravity works even today?] Anyway, that's kind of similar to going "oh I don't understand the subatomic mechanism that is causing this interference pattern, but the pattern itself is consistent so lets call that P!". Unless I completely sped past the point you were trying to make - which is completely possible at this subatomic level of reasoning (-:
  - dotancohen 8y ago
    Actually, both you and GP got it wrong. There is no need to speculate what Newton was thinking, it was all recorded. Newton was looking for methods to manipulate (push, pull) objects at a distance without touching them. He had strong ideas about the occult and what we today call black magic, in addition to being an alchemist. He devised that the Earth was manipulating the untouched Moon (capitalized, proper noun) and sought to explain the influence of the Earth on the Moon.
    - rusk 8y ago
      LOL is that for real! Please please can you give me a couple of good citations for that?
      - dotancohen 8y ago
        Interestingly, I thought that I could simply point you towards Wikipedia [1] and call it a day. However, obviously Newton's viewpoints were controversial in his day and remain so. The controversy is hinted at in Wikipedia, without details. Even the "History of gravitational theory" [2] article completely eliminates this aspect and the "Newton's law of universal gravitation" concentrates completely on the dispute with Hooke. Many science-related articles on Wikipedia suffer from good-meaning but over-zealous gatekeeping of religious influences on science. So I'll just recommend to you to read a biography or three on Newton. His entire story is fascinating and we can see how tiny events in his childhood (death of father, influence of priest uncle) have affected the history of physics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gravitational_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gravitational_theor... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gr...

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago

That's a key point - classical randomness is still causal. QM effectively seems to be non-causal - or at least, much less causal. Tidying this away under the heading of "It's probabilistic, let's just do the math and not worry about why" seems to be ignoring some very basic questions. I can't seriously imagine Newton saying "Well, the Moon stays in the sky instead of falling down - and that's frankly a bit weird, but I'm not going to wonder why because it's just a mystery and anyway, I can predict its orbit with these epicycles."

rusk 8y ago
> I can't seriously imagine Newton saying .. But he did. He called it Gravity. He didn't let figuring out "how gravity works" hold him back. He just figured out the equations that predict its effects based on observation. The unknowns happened to conveniently coalesce around a single constant G, but that doesn't make them "known". [IANAP - do we have any convincing popularly accessible models for how gravity works even today?] Anyway, that's kind of similar to going "oh I don't understand the subatomic mechanism that is causing this interference pattern, but the pattern itself is consistent so lets call that P!". Unless I completely sped past the point you were trying to make - which is completely possible at this subatomic level of reasoning (-:
- dotancohen 8y ago
  Actually, both you and GP got it wrong. There is no need to speculate what Newton was thinking, it was all recorded. Newton was looking for methods to manipulate (push, pull) objects at a distance without touching them. He had strong ideas about the occult and what we today call black magic, in addition to being an alchemist. He devised that the Earth was manipulating the untouched Moon (capitalized, proper noun) and sought to explain the influence of the Earth on the Moon.
  - rusk 8y ago
    LOL is that for real! Please please can you give me a couple of good citations for that?
    - dotancohen 8y ago
      Interestingly, I thought that I could simply point you towards Wikipedia [1] and call it a day. However, obviously Newton's viewpoints were controversial in his day and remain so. The controversy is hinted at in Wikipedia, without details. Even the "History of gravitational theory" [2] article completely eliminates this aspect and the "Newton's law of universal gravitation" concentrates completely on the dispute with Hooke. Many science-related articles on Wikipedia suffer from good-meaning but over-zealous gatekeeping of religious influences on science. So I'll just recommend to you to read a biography or three on Newton. His entire story is fascinating and we can see how tiny events in his childhood (death of father, influence of priest uncle) have affected the history of physics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gravitational_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gravitational_theor... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gr...