5 ms·
Determinism.
by sundeep 18y ago
Determinism.
- jmatt 18y ago<flips coin> I flipped a coin to decide whether I should up mod or down mod this. Was the coin flip pre-determined by my previous actions? Did I actually up mod or down mod this? :)
- noonespecial 18y agoBy reading it, you caused it to collapse into a modded state. :)
- jderick 18y agoI gave up on determinism when I learned quantum physics.
- stevedekorte 18y agoThere is nothing random in QM, only in it's interpretation. But interpretations are meaningless as there is no way to differentiate them via experiment.
- jderick 18y agoI never said there was anything random. Only non-deterministic. Of course, we are arguing philosophy, so experiments are useless.
- mattmaroon 18y agoPeople have, throughout the ages, attributed to randomness (or now non-determinism) things they couldn't understand.
- steveplace 18y agoOr they attributed it to a higher power (fatalism/determinism). Pick your poison.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- eru 18y agoI'd like to hold the opposite view: There is randomness but the world is still deterministic. Just imagine there was a big one-time table of random numbers generated with the world. Whenever a random bit is needed, it's gets taken from the table.
- yters 18y agoI am into negative philosophies, it often is a lot easier to say certain important ideas are false than to establish an overarching truth. One negative philosophy is that determinism is incoherent as a philosophy, since philosophy implies choice. While simple sounding, that idea is actually very, very deep and cuts through every discipline I know of. It forms the basis for my views on capitalism, technology, metaphysics, etc.
- sgibat 18y agoHow does philosophy imply choice?
- yters 18y agoIf it isn't a choice, then there's not much point talking about it, is there? Another example is Rand's argument that there is absolute truth: saying there is no absolute truth is a self contradiction, so it is an untenable position. That avoids the whole problem of trying to point out a specific absolute truth, while still showing its the better position.