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Classical mechanics does have nondeterministic cases even without appeals to mathematical paradoxes. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton%27s_dome https:/

Classical mechanics does have nondeterministic cases even without appeals to mathematical paradoxes. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton%27s_dome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton%27s_dome as the most well-known example.

mjburgess 3y ago
It's unclear whether that's a concequence of poorly specified premises of the classical mathematical framework. Here, I mean that 'classical reality' as specified in a framework of basic applied mathematics, with no QM premises, produces non-determinism -- via only showing that (classical) chaotic systems exist
tsimionescu 3y ago
Replied elsewhere, but Norton's dome has no real implications for classical mechanics as a full physical theory. It goes away as soon as you add the idea that matter is composed of fixed shape atoms, without even making any assumptions about the shape or size of said atoms - and this was a well-known, if often unstated, assumption even at the time of Newton.
- btilly 3y ago
  And as soon as you have a rigid 3-body collision, indeterminism comes back. If A hits B before C, you generally get a different result than if A hits C before B. If A hits B and C at the same time, a range of solutions are possible, including both limiting solutions of the previous two variations. The extreme example of this is the indeterminism of a break shot in billiards.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    Sure, but perfectly rigid bodies are also not compatible with an atomic model of matter, they are just an abstraction used in the maths. If you wanted to model an actual physical experiment, you would model any physical object as two or more rigid bodies connected by springs of an arbitrary small length*. So, anyone using classical mechanics for experimental purposes rather than explorations of the maths would model the collision of three balls in a way where simultaneity is impossible. * This is just like when modeling actual circuits, you model a physical wire as an ideal wire plus a resistor. But we don't say that "classical wire diagrams predict that the current through a wire can be infinite" just because you can draw a circuit with 0 resistance - that circuit modal is simply non-physical.
    - btilly 3y ago
      But perfectly rigid atoms are compatible with an atomic model of matter. And in such a model, the indeterminism comes right back. Yes, the idea of perfectly rigid atoms is incompatible with experiment. But so is classical mechanics on the scale where that fact becomes obvious. And so it isn't classical mechanics that is deterministic. You are right that n-body classical mechanics combined with the assumption of a continuous response does become deterministic by the standard existence and uniqueness theorems of ordinary differential equations. But the point still remains, classical mechanics winds up not being deterministic without that extra assumption. And that extra assumption is often omitted in real models of things like elastic collisions.

mjburgess 3y ago

It's unclear whether that's a concequence of poorly specified premises of the classical mathematical framework. Here, I mean that 'classical reality' as specified in a framework of basic applied mathematics, with no QM premises, produces non-determinism -- via only showing that (classical) chaotic systems exist

tsimionescu 3y ago

Replied elsewhere, but Norton's dome has no real implications for classical mechanics as a full physical theory. It goes away as soon as you add the idea that matter is composed of fixed shape atoms, without even making any assumptions about the shape or size of said atoms - and this was a well-known, if often unstated, assumption even at the time of Newton.

btilly 3y ago
And as soon as you have a rigid 3-body collision, indeterminism comes back. If A hits B before C, you generally get a different result than if A hits C before B. If A hits B and C at the same time, a range of solutions are possible, including both limiting solutions of the previous two variations. The extreme example of this is the indeterminism of a break shot in billiards.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  Sure, but perfectly rigid bodies are also not compatible with an atomic model of matter, they are just an abstraction used in the maths. If you wanted to model an actual physical experiment, you would model any physical object as two or more rigid bodies connected by springs of an arbitrary small length*. So, anyone using classical mechanics for experimental purposes rather than explorations of the maths would model the collision of three balls in a way where simultaneity is impossible. * This is just like when modeling actual circuits, you model a physical wire as an ideal wire plus a resistor. But we don't say that "classical wire diagrams predict that the current through a wire can be infinite" just because you can draw a circuit with 0 resistance - that circuit modal is simply non-physical.
  - btilly 3y ago
    But perfectly rigid atoms are compatible with an atomic model of matter. And in such a model, the indeterminism comes right back. Yes, the idea of perfectly rigid atoms is incompatible with experiment. But so is classical mechanics on the scale where that fact becomes obvious. And so it isn't classical mechanics that is deterministic. You are right that n-body classical mechanics combined with the assumption of a continuous response does become deterministic by the standard existence and uniqueness theorems of ordinary differential equations. But the point still remains, classical mechanics winds up not being deterministic without that extra assumption. And that extra assumption is often omitted in real models of things like elastic collisions.