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  #81  
Old 11-07-2005, 11:46 PM
garion888 garion888 is offline
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Default Re: How can randomness possibly exist?

First of all, electromagnetism is 99% understood by physicists. Second of all, i'm having a little trouble

You are proposing that there is a disconnect between the mathematical model of physics and "reality". Everyone who is trained in physics understands this disconnect. They are also trained to ignore it. As long as a theory is able to predict experimental results accurately, the theory may as well be taken as reality. When "the unexplainable" comes along, this disconnect obviously rears its head(ie, we predicted something that didn't happen, or we are unable to predict something that does happen). Then the theory is modified to incorporate an explanation.

It is valuable to note the point that there IS a disconnect between a scientific theory and reality. However, it is also important to note that this disconnect has very little impact on the any applications of the theory as long as the theory is able to predict experimental results accurately.
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  #82  
Old 11-08-2005, 12:25 AM
tonysoldier tonysoldier is offline
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Default Re: How can randomness possibly exist?

The OP tacitly assumes that ALL real knowledge is governed in accepting the determinacy of science (I don't know much about quantum stuff). The gaps or disconnects, the insuffiencies of science in certain questions clears the way for an indeterminate answer to these questions. There may be a value to Godel's incompleteness theorem ... the paradoxes where either zero or two mutually exclusive answers present themselves may represent places of indeterminacy and maybe of pure chance.

What you said about people being trained to ignore certain disconnects is very interesting. What if instead we were to focus on them, what would the effect be on popular conceptions of truth and knowledge?
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  #83  
Old 11-08-2005, 03:53 AM
garion888 garion888 is offline
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Default Re: How can randomness possibly exist?

I think the focusing has happened already. When someone/group doubts a scientific theory due to their focus on its incompleteness, they tend to toss the baby with the bathwater. They may think if its not right all the time its never right.

Or take the case when someone who is unfamiliar with the formalism of science/mathmatics draws an incorrect conclusion about a theory and they happen to have a strong voice in the community. In this case, the community becomes aware of the "defect" before anyone who totally understands the theory is able to call the bullshit.

Then events happen where a cute remark by a scientist gets taken out of context and the public hears a lot about it. The case at Brookhaven where someone made a joke about their experiment and its ability to collapse the entire universe.

Lay people already focus on the disconnect between scientific theory and reality. Sometimes its sinister but most times I think that they end just not investigating far enough into a particular theory.
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  #84  
Old 11-08-2005, 08:07 PM
atrifix atrifix is offline
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Default Re: How can randomness possibly exist?

What kind of information would you need from the double-slit experiment? It seems that we have all the relevant information; all reasonable confounding influences have been removed. Physicists have used electrons, which tend to behave like "normal" particles, rather than photons, and have even been able to do this experiment with a single electron thanks to modern technology. Yet they still cannot predict where the electron will end up. The most reasonable thing to take from the experiment is that there is inherent randomness. Perhaps some other theory will come along that explains it more precisely, but with our current knowledge, it seems unlikely. Computers cannot create randomness, but that may simply be a result of our limited technology.

Another question--if there is inherent randomness, how is that "free will"? Would you consider your actions to be "free" if they were just probabilities?
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  #85  
Old 11-09-2005, 01:41 AM
poincaraux poincaraux is offline
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Default Re: How can randomness possibly exist?

do you have a reasonable math/physics background? i don't have time to read the whole thread here, but if you do have such a background, read up on Bell's inequalities. Wikipedia has an ok article. Someone .. I think maybe RB Griffiths .. wrote a fantastic paper on this .. i think it was in the early '90s or late '80s. Seriously, look this up.
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