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Old 12-16-2005, 08:00 PM
gumpzilla gumpzilla is offline
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Default Re: Why is Randomness so Hard to Prove?

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Consider the up/down spin of two entangled particles (pretty much the classic QM experiment). This is consistent with a computer simulation that doesn't calculate the up/down values until they are needed for something. When one of the particles is force by measurement to have an up/down value the 'program' pseduo-randomly allocates the values up/down to the particles. This happens at the speed of the computer which is many orders of magnitude greater than the max speed within the simulation.

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The pseudo-randomness is key here. It means that you've essentially put forth a hidden variable theory, since we can completely characterize the expected measurements of various quantities (since the pseudo-random generator is presumably deterministic.) This might be acceptable, but thanks to Bell's theorem it has consequences about what your theory needs to look like, and thus might run into problems with reality. For this, and some other reasons (the computer that's going to classically simulate our QM universe is going to be mind-bogglingly huge compared to our universe itself), I don't think that the prospect of QM all being a deterministic simulation (some kind of brain-in-vat exercise writ large) is terribly realistic. I guess that's not your point, but it does at least suggest that there is strong evidence for inherent randomness.

I haven't really read the rest of the thread, but I'll make a comment about randomness, one that I'd be surprised if it hasn't already been brought up. Even in the face of perfect determinism, there is such an incredible degree of complexity that there are many things that are going to be essentially random in the end because you just can't control all of the important parameters precisely enough. And in the end, that's what's important about randomness anyway.
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