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Bell's Theorem basically says that there isn't a deterministic system underlying quantum mechanics. Therefore the universe is fundamentally unpredictable. You
by CuriouslyC 6y ago
Bell's Theorem basically says that there isn't a deterministic system underlying quantum mechanics. Therefore the universe is fundamentally unpredictable. You could take that to mean everything is random, or that everything has "free will" (constrained by the need to coexist with everything else).
Personally, I find the idea that the universe is a living thing that can feel and act all scales of complexity to be delightful, and it certainly has massive ethical ramifications.
- jerf 6y agoChaos theory (and I mean the real thing, with the real math) also shows that "deterministic" does not imply "predictable", either. Even classical systems can be fundamentally unpredictable. I think one of the problems with this question is that the experiments are fundamentally impossible. You can't put an identical person in identical situations 100 times and see what they do. That wouldn't necessarily even solve the problem since exactly what any given result would even mean would still be up for debate, but you can't even get that far. You can deny free will all you like and you'll never be able to prove it by predicting everything in advance. You can claim it all you like and you'll never be able to show the existence of the counterfactual world where you freely chose differently. Doesn't matter how much word chopping you do.
- cjg 6y agoBell's Theorem doesn't say that at all. It just puts constraints on what such a deterministic system would have to be. For example a non-local deterministic system could well be compatible with Bell's Theorem.
- GoblinSlayer 6y agoLocal deterministic system is compatible too. Only Newtonian system is incompatible.
- CuriouslyC 6y agoThanks for mentioning this. To be fair, locality of information is a pretty common assumption but I should definitely qualify this a bit more in the future.