Determinism or Indeterminism

Boris & Crisp,

I would love to continue this discussion A.S.A.P. we are getting closer and closer to some kind of consensus, I can feel it. Although it may not look at all this way at this point.
However severe time constraints restrict me from furthering this discussion into the realm of synthesis. I will get back as soon as I can, hopefully today.

 

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Ok people, let's roll !

That is hardly the case, in fact we are doing measurments with the weak force (otherwise we couldn't detect neutrino's since they only interact through this weak force) gravitywave will soon become a means to probe the far reaches of space since we are now building large stations like the ligo detectors to pick up this weakest of all forces.
The problem is, they all exibit the same properties as what you said about electromagnetism. So actually what you are saying is : you believe that somehow the world is deterministic but for all practicle purposes we must assume that it is indeterministic. Isn't this a good place for Occam's Razor ?

Look Boris, 'exchanging information' as you put it must involve in the most general case a carrier of this information. The non-locality of quantummechanics would suggest that their could be a way of circumventing this but that is an illusion because this very non-locality is nescessary and sufficient for Heisenberg uncertainty. This means a breakdown of information. So information can only be transferred locally, as a package.
You see how much assumptions you are already making if you simply use the frase : basic particles interact.

You should better use the term 'energy' in this context. But Boris, entropy is not a deterministic concept, you can not explain it with a deterministic theory. You can see this in any work of thermodynamics, entropy is an ad hoc concept, it doesn't follow from the basic equations of Newton or any other basic equations who are time-symmetrical.

again you are using indeterministic language : something disturbed that state. This something cannot be expained deterministically because it has no direct cause !

Given all that anything can follow since you contradicted yourself time and time again.

A metric (I assume you are talking about the g_{\mu\nu} of relativity) my dear Boris is something that is totally coordinate independent ! That was precisely the reason why Einstein used it in his relativity theory since any pinning to a certain coordinate system would have been fatal to the theory he was developing.
For the rest I refer you to what Crisp has said. And hope you won't slap him on the head for it

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I'm afraid to say that we indeed defined 2+2 to be 4 since there are algebra's in which 2+2 equals zero and they are also perfectly consistent !
We have to resort to observation to choose the correct algebra that confirms with our universe. But this means that algebra is something far more general then the universe we live in, and certainly that mathematics is something far more general. It could be that there are several possible ways to describe our universe who are all totally consistent but are utterly different from each other. Our way is this specific type of algebra. Actually it is becoming more and more a trend to use geometry in stead of algebra to talk about the fundamental interactions, see String Theory.

Here I already have a counter example : when quantum mechanics was develloped in the twenties there were two distinct ways to tacle the problem : one was the wavemechanics of Schrödinger that involved a wave function, the other was the matrix mechanics of Heisenberg that involved non-commutable matrices. It took two year before it was realised that the two views were actually complementary, this was shown by Dirac and he made a third way of looking at quantummechanics: the bracet notations.
So you see that the mathematics aren't fundamental at all but are simply a language with different dialects that can talk about the same thing independently from each other.

What is this that you have against electromagnetism ? Besides all other forces are found based on this fundamental assumption that global symmetries need to be locallised in order to make them free of global referential frames, this is what gauge theory is all about !

This going backward of time is merly a freak solution of the fundamental equations being time symmetric and will be taken care of in due time. What you are reffering to as 'rate' is exactly the same as 'time' there is no differentiation of rates if there is no differentiation of times.

What is spacetime ? Aha, actually I don't have the foggiest idea but what could come close to it could be this. I think what we call spacetime is the form and shape of the GUT-field of which all forces and particles come. Why does it has this specific amount of dimensions and shape ? Because it is the only possible one that agrees with gauge theory and renormalisation of this theory. You can get a feeling of this with String theory.

Not at all Boris, the reason why continuous substrates become quantised is because they are waves ! Waves who are bound can only exist as an integral times their ground wave. Free wave are contiuous again, that is why photons come in any possible wavelenght and free electrons can have any possible energy. Once bound in an atom, their wavenature restricts them to a certain amount of energy states.

First of all, you are contradicting yourself again when you said that mathematics is something that we 'observe', if there is no such thing as a perfect circle in nature how are we to make a math with perfect circles ?

Besides I'm afraid gauge theory requires a continuous symmetry for it to produce photons and gravitons and gluons and W and Z bosons. So by by discrete theory.

Yes, let's tacle this once and for all.
First of all we are talking about magnetism and electrostatic force which are not the fundamental forces. Magnetism is actually the rotor of the underlying Vector field : \nabla \times \vec{A} (I hope this \Latex notation makes any sense to you, if it doesn't \nabla is the sign used for taking the gradiant : \nabla f(\vec{r}) = \partial{f}/\partial{x}\vec{e}_x + \partial{f}/\partial{y}\vec{e}_y + \partial{f}/\partial{y}\vec{e}_y) and the electrostatic field is the gradient of the underlying scalair field plus the time derivative of the vectorfield.
\vec{E} = \nabla \phi - 1/c\partial{\vec{A}}/\partial{t}. So you see that the righthandedness that you are talking about finds its origan in the sign of the vectorfield and the scalair field.
Crisp is very much right when he says that a vectorpoduct isn't actually a vector at all, it is a pseudovector (also called an axial vector). This means that under parity transformations (this is the mirror transformation that Crisp was talking about) the pseudovector keeps his sign while the vector reverses it. This means that the magnetic field actually is a pseudovectorfield while the electric field a real vectorfield is. This is the reason why there is a fundamental righthandedness for the magnetic field because it is invariant under mirror transformations !

So thank you Crisp for finally pointing this out to us.

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About your posts :

Ok, let's take the wave nature of elementary particles, as I explained above it gives a perfect explanation of how an otherwise continuous substrate can give rise to quantised energy levels. This explanation requires nature to be indeterminsitic or rather : incomplete deterministic.
What this means is : if I postualte strict determinism as undertlying logic of the universe I can't explain quantisation, if I postulate incomplete determinism, I can expain it. Take your pick I should say.

No Crisp, as Boris already pointed out a deterministic system doesn't exhaust all its possiblities. If you propose a probability distribution as fundamental object then all the possiblities are exhausted by that, they will all have a certain probability.

Wow, this thread is steaming ! I love it !

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I err, therefore I exist !

 

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Hi Plato, Boris, et al.

Phew, time to catch up with you guys; spent the last week preparing a presentation I had to give today (and rest assured, talking to 20 professors that know things way better than you is not an easy challenge

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Now for your post, Plato:

Okay, thermodynamics is a very tricky subject because it involves a mixture of both deterministic and indeterministic reasonings. I agree when you say that all books on thermodynamics postulate the existance of entropy as the second law of thermodynamics, but most books also tell a little story about why entropy is necessary (and that's the "we cannot know all parameters for all 10^30 particles so we work statistically" explanation) and this is where the indeterministic view comes in. The underlying idea is deterministic however, in the way that in principle you could know all the 10^30 equations of state, but because it is inpractical, you use entropy and distributions.

And why wouldn't it have a direct cause ?

I always liked math

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...

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Okay....

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I think you pretty much got me here

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. All of the sudden the idea of incomplete indeterminism sounds much more appealing

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Bye!

Crisp


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"The best thing you can become in life is yourself" -- M. Eyskens.

 

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Following the discussion in this thread, I have to state I agree with Plato.

The argument of the decaying atom is indeed a good one here. Presently we must accept that 10 identical (to the best of our efforts) atoms can decay at different times, but that the probabilities always are correct. Saying there is still something we didn't discover yet is cheap. The theory we have now suffices. If there is more, good thing, but for now, that's a believe.
Science is not about believing.

About the beginning of the universe and the necessety of a cause that disturbed the initial state. Don't worry, off course there will be a cause, and science does it best to discover that. What Plato wants to show (I think), is that when we find the cause, we will also find that that cause could lead to a different outcome. And who knows, perhaps the probability for the outcome we had, is an almost centainty (a delta function as Plato calls it).

About the sidethread of the human brain. I also don't think it's a Turing Machine. It also works with probabilities (and I saw this in the course AI, part Neural Networks).
The way to make it animated (alive) is that we also have a system to evaluate the probabilities, and to apply feedback, so that the action with the biggest probability off success is pursued. So we don't just wait till things happen to us. We work out different threads (subconsciously), and evaluate this with a goal we set us to do. Since we don't know beforehand if one of the threads will lead to a way out of a certain situation, we can't predict if a person can solve a certain problem (although we are often capable of guessing the goal, based on passed actions).

My personal conclusion of this thread :
1/if one cause/start state can lead to different effects, then the world is indeterministic. Present experimental proof, leads me to believe this is the case.
2/if I can influence the process leading to the effect, and evaluate beforehand the different probabilities, I can choice the one best to my liking to follow. I still don't have certainty, but I have the choice of the functions with the biggest probability. In short, I am a free man.

 

Hi Conseil,

Even though I now consider myself a fallen angel (sorry Boris, Plato got to me with his energy-discretization), I still cannot be satisfied with the decaying nucleus answer presented here - if we cannot predict when the nucleus will decay, or at least explain why the decay occurs (what internal cause leads to this) then our theories are still flawed. I've said this before, but now I believe that the mechanism behind it doesn't have to be deterministic per se. Finding the exact cause is important however.

Saying that there is something that hasn't been discovered yet is not cheap. It's the question that drives science. Denying that there are still things out there to be discovered is wrong IMHO; Einstein was right when he said that the more he knew, the more he was realizing that he in fact knew nothing.

I beg to differ. Science is a belief just like any other. Take away the belief in a few postulates and all theories we have melt away. Even experimentalists have to believe in their empirical laws, so I'd rather say that the whole of science is about rational believing.

Anyway, welcome to the board conseil

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Bye!

Crisp


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"The best thing you can become in life is yourself" -- M. Eyskens.

 

Hello Conseil,

thanks for the backup here. However there are some minor points I would like to clear up :

Yes, that is what I want to say : the same cause (e.g. the instability of the nothing) might lead to different outcomes. However I don't think that the probability would be a deltafunction. This would mean that there would be high restrictions on the initial conditions of our universe. For the moment I don't quite see where they would come from...

Crisp,

Let's see if I can make you fall a little bit further

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Ok, let's look at the nucleus for a while. First of all, I don't know if you have seen any nuclear models but they actually very much resemble the models we have of atoms. They also have magical numbers of protons and neutrons where the nucleus is exceptionally stable (this means that the internal energy shows a minimum, but you probably knew that...) and they have 'orbitals' that can be filled with neutrons or protons. So we might as well look at decay of any kind of quantum system.
You probably also know that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle comes in two variants : the one which couples variations in impuls with variations in place and the one which couples variantions in time with variations in energy. This is quite easily understood if you look at it through special relativity eyes then the two relations become two aspects of the same four-vector relation.
What does the second relation mean ? It finds its meaning in decay and absorption reactions.
What does it tell us of stable systems ? A stable system would mean no energy variation, this means an infinite time variation or in other words we don't know or have no way of knowing when this system was created or when it will ever decay. This already shows the way to the fundamental interchangebility of quantumsystems with the same energy.
What does it mean for an unstable system ? Here we have a way to predict how long this system will live, to a certain degree of course. We can calculate the exact time it takes for the system to have a fifty percent chance to decay (or any other chance to that respect). The reason we are able to do this is because we know the cause of the instability, this could be for example in the case of Carbon 14, to have two neutrons to many. We can calculate how much energy these neutrons have in their orbitals and thus how much energy will be released at least when the nucleus decays by converting one of the neutrons into a proton and sending out an electron and anti-neutrino in the process.

Boris,

I have been reading some sites that talk about String theory : it doesn't look good at all for determinists

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It appears that they even have an additional uncertainty : namely one that prevents them to know the exact nature of spacetime itself ! By, by discrete grid of which everything is build...

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I err, therefore I exist !

 

Patterns, Design, and Physical Laws

Patterns, Design, and Physical Laws
A computer program will behave in exactly the same way at any time on any computer, given the same initial state. A software program is an example of a "pattern". The program may be copied. Two copies of the program will behave exactly the same way on two different computers even though the two computers, on which the program copies run, are made up of completely different atoms from one another.

Because the computer program is a pattern, it could be translated into an entirely different programming language and run on an entirely new type of computer. The computers are patterns as well. The pattern called "computer" and the pattern called "program" have a degree of independence from the stuff of which they are made. At the physical level, the atoms, and electrons, and the energy states are absolutely 100% different on both machines and both "copies" of the "same" program, yet the programs behave in exactly the same way on the "design" level!

Ultimately, the computer and the program that runs on it are subject to the pre-determined laws at the physical level, but the patterns at the design level are subject to a much stronger force - that imposed by the pattern itself. Even though the atoms, the initial state and everything about the two computers and the two programs can be absolutely 100% different in space, time, behavior, initial state, molecular structure, elements, and on and on..., the pattern manages to "overrule" the pre-determined physical state that the computer and the program will be in at the start and the end of the running at end of the program. We are not even concerned of the "physical" state of the pattern, only the "design" state of the pattern.

Patterns are at least somewhat independent of the stuff of which they are made. A boat is a pattern. If it has several parts replaced on it, as the parts wear out, it is still recognized as the same boat. A person is a pattern with atoms and cells that are constantly changing.

Similar to the program pattern, identical twins are born with identical copies of a DNA pattern, but each copy is obviously made up of separate molecules. The twins rapidly form separate identities because their initial conditions and environments are different at both the physical and the pattern level.

Unlike boats, DNA, people, computers, and Turing machines all are patterns that contain a type of memory and take input from the outside environment in the world in which they exist. DNA and people are different from computers and Turing machines, largely due to their relative complexity, but at least partially because they are subject to both physical and pattern states. Physical objects, independent of the person or the DNA may change their respective pattern behavior in unpredictable ways. Unless pre-programmed in advance, to accept inputs, for example, an ordinary software program will ignore external events.

Although, ultimately "it is all physical", the white blood cell reacts to the germ that it "detects" in the blood stream, because it is "programmed" by the DNA to seek and destroy germs, not merely clumps of amino acids, but the special pattern we may call a "germ".

DNA mutates in a random way due to being struck by various particles. These mutations are the physical mechanisms by which Evolution occurs. Mother Nature would not get very far by merely following low-level physical laws. Random change must be augmented by a Design mechanism - the Pattern of Natural Selection which is used to select the most "useful" designs for replication, and to eliminate the "bad" designs. Natural Selection is a very slow process, because it is so closely linked to the natural physical level. That is why relatively simplistic life forms do not have many degrees of freedom. However, as the patterns (life forms), become more and more complex, with patterns layering upon other layers of patterns, they gain more and more freedom from their physical makeup. Each pattern layer is subject to the new laws of the pattern "designs" of the layers "below" allowing a slightly higher degree of freedom from the underlying physical layer.

The computer program "if" statement "reacts" to the value (pattern, design) of "true" or "false", and does not give one hoot about the makeup of the computer or how the "true" or "false" is ultimately represented at the physical level. An "if" statement embedded inside a computer program follows rules that are designed into the programming language. The computer program may be of the sort, such as the Java programming language, that is interpreted by a virtual machine - yet another program. The virtual machine is said to run "on top of" the computer operating system. Eventually, these multiple layers of programs (patterns) get converted into the machine language that the Central Processing Unit (CPU) "understands". The CPU, in turn, is made up of patterns of circuits. The circuits are made up of a complex pattern of logical “NAND”, “XOR” and “NOT” gates, and are manufactured out of silicon and various other elements, consisting of atoms, and powered by electricity.

Each layer outlined above, from the bottom physical layers, to the top software layers, have room for multiple design or pattern variations in their makeup. As long as each pattern layer is designed in such a way as to produce the same outputs and accept the same inputs that are “expected” by the layers immediately above and below it, the design variations will not affect the state of the program of interest at the top layer. In general, the higher the level in the pattern layers, the higher the degrees of freedom one has in the design of that level. The original program could be written in several different ways, and still express identical results to the original.

A baseball player, consisting of many more complex layers than a computer program, may decide to move out of the way of the ball rapidly flying towards his face, because the ball is going to smack him in the face and it will hurt. The physical state of the ball is of no immediate interest. It could be any baseball at any time in any space - it is the "ball" and "face" and "pain" patterns that are the important pieces of information stored somewhere in the baseball player's brain. It could be any baseball player playing on any baseball team. It is not inevitable that the player will be hit by the ball or that player will avoid the ball.

The baseball player’s conscious level is built upon countless pattern-based "design" layers which allows for a degree of freedom allowing for the avoidance of the "inevitability" of being struck by the ball. The baseball player’s conscious mind is much more influenced both by the patterns it is processing, and the patterns doing the processing, than by the physical stuff that the player’s brain is made of.

Ultimately, the physical structures of the atoms involved do matter. The physical laws do determine the direction, speed, and force of impact of the ball. The brain is physically made out of atoms, but the baseball player does not care or think about those things. The player is considering the patterns (and avoiding pain).

Free Will and Determinism are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, an agent "pattern", with a memory and feedback from the external world can make predictions better in a fully deterministic universe than it could in a non-deterministic universe. Calculation can be made by that agent, to avoid dangers, seek energy sources, improve its local environment, self-replicate, communicate (via yet another set of patterns following rules) with other similarly-patterned agents, and so on.

 

Above, I mentioned that “patterns at the design level are subject to a much stronger force - that imposed by the pattern itself”. “A much stronger influence" is a more accurate phrase. Weaker forces seem to have stronger influences at macroscopic levels than do the strong forces.

I am no expert in physics, so some statements may not be completely accurate. Hopefully, the overall concepts will be clear:

At the sub-atomic level, we see that there seems to be a non-deterministic quantum state "ruling" this "lowest level of all worlds" world - the center of the onion. However, it is masked by a more deterministic, atomic-level "pattern" one, or just a few levels above it.

The Neutrons and Protons consist of sets of 3 quarks each, held by the strong nuclear force. A residual force holds the nucleus together. The weak nuclear force works at a larger distance but is obviously weaker. The Electro-magnetic force controls electrons, with the residual binging atoms to create molecules.

Already, at these lower pattern levels, determinism seems to overcome the quantum effect. The larger the pattern, the more reliable and useful they become. On my way to work, I do not have to hunt for the local Starbucks, where I get my coffee for my long trek to work in the morning

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Gravity is a force that is so weak, that scientist are just now getting the point where it can be measured at distances down to the millimeter. I have heard that gravity is 5-10 orders of magnitude weaker than the electro-magnetic force, yet it has a dominant influence over ordinary matter! As I sit here at my computer desk, I can very much feel gravity holding me down on my chair. The patterns of solar systems and galaxies are not “interested” in the stronger forces. Still larger patterns are dominated by Dark Energy (from the vacuum of space?) Is this because the entire Universe is the largest and greatest pattern?