4 ms·

If reality is deterministic, it can't possibly be frequentist. If you had total information you would assign every real event probability 1, or some reliable 0<

If reality is deterministic, it can't possibly be frequentist. If you had total information you would assign every real event probability 1, or some reliable 0<p<1 for continuity-of-experience with a self traveling down one of the branches of an as yet unresolved quantum event.

jerf 18y ago
Reality does not appear to be deterministic in any sense of the term.
- JulianMorrison 18y ago
  Please clarify.
  - jerf 18y ago
    A vague hand wave in the direction of QM? I'm not sure how to clarify. The idea that reality is deterministic is so completely unsupported by evidence, I don't even know where to start. Between uncertainty principles forbidding you from knowing the precise state of the universe even in principle and the randomness of the universe's behavior even in situations you have full knowledge of (which may yet be traced back to mathematical undecidability, per a recent, interesting paper on arxiv), determinism is dead. If they can track it back to mathematical undecidability, no conceivable heroic effort can bring it back, either. (I suspect there's some fruitful work to be done there.)
    - JulianMorrison 18y ago
      Quantum physics is usefully sketched out for the layperson here: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/the-quantum-phy.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/the-quantum-phy.html It's deterministic. QM objections are based on bad pop sci. Undecidability in the context of physics sounds interesting, care to add detail?
      - jerf 18y ago
        That series of posts goes beyond the science. I think his arguments boil down to him simply being unable to accept nondeterminism, and his argument that many-worlds is inevitable is simply absurd on the face of it; we could be in a simulation that is based in a universe without many-worlds and you'd never be able to tell the difference, so it's hardly obvious that even if we're not in a simulation that many worlds is inevitable. I also think he falls prey to Euclidianism, which most people do. In a Minkowskian universe, a lot of QM's nondeterminism is a lot less magical, even if it's still nondeterministic.
  - Retric 18y ago
    Read up on the double slit experiment in QM. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment "it is easy to account for the interference pattern that results by assuming that electrons that travel in pairs are interfering with each other because they arrive at the screen at the same time, but when a laboratory apparatus was developed that could reliably fire single electrons at the screen, the emergence of an interference pattern suggested that each electron was interfering with itself; and, therefore, in some sense the electron had to be going through both slits" PS: "it has been shown that large molecular structures like fullerene (C60) also produce interference patterns." which suggest at some level you could get the same result when firing planet's though a double slit experiment.
  - rms 18y ago
    I think you probably have different definitions of determinism. Or are thinking of different aspects of it. Or are talking about different models of QM.

jerf 18y ago

Reality does not appear to be deterministic in any sense of the term.

JulianMorrison 18y ago
Please clarify.
- jerf 18y ago
  A vague hand wave in the direction of QM? I'm not sure how to clarify. The idea that reality is deterministic is so completely unsupported by evidence, I don't even know where to start. Between uncertainty principles forbidding you from knowing the precise state of the universe even in principle and the randomness of the universe's behavior even in situations you have full knowledge of (which may yet be traced back to mathematical undecidability, per a recent, interesting paper on arxiv), determinism is dead. If they can track it back to mathematical undecidability, no conceivable heroic effort can bring it back, either. (I suspect there's some fruitful work to be done there.)
  - JulianMorrison 18y ago
    Quantum physics is usefully sketched out for the layperson here: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/the-quantum-phy.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/the-quantum-phy.html It's deterministic. QM objections are based on bad pop sci. Undecidability in the context of physics sounds interesting, care to add detail?
    - jerf 18y ago
      That series of posts goes beyond the science. I think his arguments boil down to him simply being unable to accept nondeterminism, and his argument that many-worlds is inevitable is simply absurd on the face of it; we could be in a simulation that is based in a universe without many-worlds and you'd never be able to tell the difference, so it's hardly obvious that even if we're not in a simulation that many worlds is inevitable. I also think he falls prey to Euclidianism, which most people do. In a Minkowskian universe, a lot of QM's nondeterminism is a lot less magical, even if it's still nondeterministic.
- Retric 18y ago
  Read up on the double slit experiment in QM. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment "it is easy to account for the interference pattern that results by assuming that electrons that travel in pairs are interfering with each other because they arrive at the screen at the same time, but when a laboratory apparatus was developed that could reliably fire single electrons at the screen, the emergence of an interference pattern suggested that each electron was interfering with itself; and, therefore, in some sense the electron had to be going through both slits" PS: "it has been shown that large molecular structures like fullerene (C60) also produce interference patterns." which suggest at some level you could get the same result when firing planet's though a double slit experiment.
- rms 18y ago
  I think you probably have different definitions of determinism. Or are thinking of different aspects of it. Or are talking about different models of QM.