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Old 12-14-2005, 09:37 PM
Piers Piers is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 246
Default Re: Why is Randomness so Hard to Prove?

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Quantum mechanics does not disprove determinism; it just suggests that completely accurate predictions of the future are currently beyond us.

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QM does NOT suggest that accurate predicitons are currently beyond us. QM says that the most htat can be known by anyone (whether it be a god, a superhuman or supermachine) is the wave function!

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Quantum mechanics says that if you model a wave or particle using quantum mechanics then the most that can be know by anyone (whether it be a god, a superhuman or supermachine) is the wave function.

Also for the moment quantum mechanics appears the best model we have for such wave/partial dynamics.

It is important not to confuse model and reality. The choice to apply any model is always subjective.

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Quantum mechanics does not disprove determinism; it just suggests that completely accurate predictions of the future are currently beyond us.

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I agree that my language was slightly sloppy.

The original poster claimed that QM could be used to disprove determinism.

The point I was trying to make is that if QM is the best model we have, then the most our current use of QM could do is show that determining the future is currently beyond us.

I was buying in to his assumption that determinism does not exist within a QM model, but pointing out that a model cannot give results outside of itself.

Personally I think the whole QM thing feels like the projection of some structure onto a subspace. If we could step back we would be able to see a way of lifting everything to some super-space where all the QM paradoxes disappear. But that’s just me guessing in the dark.
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