Determinism

[TheBigDog]

I reject determinism out of pure ego. Regardless of what evidence is presented in favor of determinism, if it is proven true and I have no free will, then I have no self and no purpose. In order to be a force of any importance (by my own measure) I rely upon my decisions to to lead me to my chosen destinations. If I found that my decisions were in fact an illusion then my mind and with it my whole existance would become pointless. I am not pointless, so I reject that notion as a possibility.

 

That being said, human choice is never a predictable outcome. You can find statistical trends in motivation of decisions. But as a person with a highly evolved mind I can use all sorts of complex rationality, including things based entirely upon imagination, with no basis in reality whatsoever, as the rational for my decisions. If our thoughts can be based upon fiction, and we act upon our thoughts, then we are not slaves to cause and effect reality. We have free will, however perverse.

 

Bill

[Kriminal99]

On the other hand, an unwillingness to "go read x" may simply hide an inability to read. Or a lack of true desire to understand. Many people would just prefer to fiddle with their arguments like they fiddle with their dandruff. It gives them something to do. :evil:

 

Yes that's brilliant. I can't read. Thats it. :hyper:

 

I was simply pointing out that statements like "I can't see how this can possibly be true" are silly. Why not pick up a book and learn? How can you direct any sensible argument against a theory you know virtually nothing about?

 

You want to say everything is deterministic, there is a vast body of literature that contradicts your claims (and at the same time it puts forward the most successful scientific theory ever). Rather then read any of this, you simply say "nope, can't be true."

 

 

 

Probability CAN be used to describe a deterministic system. It can also be used to describe a system that is purely probabilistic with no completely deterministic understructure. In your dice example, the underlying physics is completely classical, completely deterministic.

 

 

 

I'm suggesting that classically we know everything about the incoming radiation, but when we attempt to quantize we find we are limited to predictions of probability. This is not to be a deffinitive proof but to give you an example of the type of probabilities that emerge in quantum mechanics. On a side note: Bell's inequalities suggest that perhaps there is nothing else to know about the photon.

 

 

 

My emphasis added. You again assume with no research that Bell's result depends on a mistake, a flaw in his statistical reasoning. I suggest reading through a proof of Bell's theroem before making sweeping statements. It seems as if you believe you know more about statistics then Bell and the physicists who accept his proof.

 

I assert once more that Bell showed that quantum mechanics is inconsistent with the idea of local hidden variables. If quantum mechanics is correct (and experiment has born it out) we have to give up traditional local determinism.

-Will

The belief set you are trying to defend, non determinism, FULLY DEPENDS on looking at something and saying that it is not true even though you do not know. That is the problem with non deterministic theories.

 

Why waste my time reading the theory which I have no reason to believe is anything more than a temporary misstep? Reading an incorrect theory is not educating yourself on anything other than perhaps history. I could just as easily tell some of the non determinists to go read books on probability theory so they understand it completely enough to be applying it to what they see dealing with quantum mechanics. But if I did that, it means I can't explain it to them and if I can't explain it to them it means I do not understand it as well as their views well enough to be making such judgements.

 

Everyone tends to overestimate the signifigance of the beliefs they agree with. If it were so well known that determinism is false, then I wouldn't have to turn the forum upside down to find someone who believed it and didn't have a poor understanding of probability theory.

 

It is a few very general philosophical argument that precludes claims like "determinism is false" from ever being true. That is why one need not delve into the complex self deceptions that go into convincing oneself into believing otherwise- Yet obviously I do anyways because I can. Many discoveries in science and mathematics are just minor adaptations of philosophical truths discovered long before them.

 

Completely probabilistic? And this means what? And you can differentiate it from a deterministic system where you do not know the factors involved how?

 

Human beings cannot know everything about anything - except for this fact. Our minds are not capable because they work on induction. We simply have the abscence of anything contradicting what we currently believe.

 

Bell's inequalities depend on assumptions, more assumptions than are commonly recognized. There is always the possibility for deception. This is when something looks like A, but in reality B is the case and unknown factors have made it look like A is the case when in fact it is not. Then there is the simple fact which I have outlined in my previous post. There is an assumption, which we have no reason to believe is true, without which the ENTIRE DISCIPLINE of statistics is rendered utterly useless. Further more inductive reasoning in general is rendered utterly useless. This problem with induction was stated by philosophers a long time ago. All within the confines of determinism. Human nature does not allow the disproof of determinism.

 

The problem with you is that you is that you still think like an animal. Do you honestly believe statements like "It seems as if you believe you know more about statistics then Bell and the physicists who accept his proof." have any signfigant meaning? Any logical value? They do not. If you understood probability theory and still disagreed with me you would combat my claims directly. You do not do this, yet you still argue with me. This means you are disagreeing with me for reasons other than that you competently believe me to be wrong. Everyone who disagrees with me might be doing for reasons other than that they competently believe I am wrong. Therefore it is meaningless how many people disagree.

 

I reject determinism out of pure ego. Regardless of what evidence is presented in favor of determinism, if it is proven true and I have no free will, then I have no self and no purpose. In order to be a force of any importance (by my own measure) I rely upon my decisions to to lead me to my chosen destinations. If I found that my decisions were in fact an illusion then my mind and with it my whole existance would become pointless. I am not pointless, so I reject that notion as a possibility.

 

That being said, human choice is never a predictable outcome. You can find statistical trends in motivation of decisions. But as a person with a highly evolved mind I can use all sorts of complex rationality, including things based entirely upon imagination, with no basis in reality whatsoever, as the rational for my decisions. If our thoughts can be based upon fiction, and we act upon our thoughts, then we are not slaves to cause and effect reality. We have free will, however perverse.

 

Bill

 

Why would lack of free will make life pointless? You can still have a self in that, noone else has experienced exactly everything that you have no more and no less. Suppose we were as robots only acting as a result of input factors... yet we still feel. Would we need to prevent ourselves from feeling because we knew that it was deterministic and could consider the purpose of the feelings better than relying on the feelings themselves... and then wonder what the point of the purpose such feelings were meant to serve was? No- instead we could look at the feelings themselves (at least the good ones) as the point of life, and save rationalizing them away as a defense against the bad feelings.

 

I agree that you can make decisions based on imagination. However I disagree that this frees us from determinism. Perhaps imagination is deterministic. One might claim a fantasy movie to be a product of imagination. But what is a unicorn other than a horse with a goat's horn on its head? Perhaps imagination is nothing more than performing functions on that which we percieve, in a manner tha pleases us. If what we see and what pleases us are both deterministic in this case, then so is imagination.

[Erasmus00]

Why waste my time reading the theory which I have no reason to believe is anything more than a temporary misstep? Reading an incorrect theory is not educating yourself on anything other than perhaps history. I could just as easily tell some of the non determinists to go read books on probability theory so they understand it completely enough to be applying it to what they see dealing with quantum mechanics.

 

I'm very familiar with both physics and probability theory. The reason I didn't "combat your points directly" is that you addressed no part of Bell's theroem directly.

 

Now, quantum mechanics is easily the most successful scientific theory of all time. To assert that it is a temporary misstep (again, with no personal knowledge of the theory) is simply unwarranted arrogance.

 

It is a few very general philosophical argument that precludes claims like "determinism is false" from ever being true.

 

The statement is not "determinism is false." The statement is that, on a quantum scale, nature is not locally deterministic. I hold that nature (and hence experiment) is the judge of what is or isn't true. All the logical argument in the world can't hold up to one good experiment. Quantum mechanics has been experimentally verified over and over again.

 

I've seen many pages of arguments demonstrating the logical impossibility of relativity, for instance, despite the fact that nature seems to hold to it.

 

Completely probabilistic? And this means what? And you can differentiate it from a deterministic system where you do not know the factors involved how?

 

As I said, Bell's inequalities allow one to seperate probabilistic theories with local deterministic sub-structure from those that do not.

 

Bell's inequalities depend on assumptions, more assumptions than are commonly recognized. There is always the possibility for deception. This is when something looks like A, but in reality B is the case and unknown factors have made it look like A is the case when in fact it is not.

 

What assumptions that Bell has made do you disagree with? You make sweeping general claims without at all spending any time looking at Bell's proof.

 

Then there is the simple fact which I have outlined in my previous post. There is an assumption, which we have no reason to believe is true, without which the ENTIRE DISCIPLINE of statistics is rendered utterly useless.

 

You do understand that there is a difference between probability theory and statistics? Bell's proof is a theoretical construct that shows that quantum mechanics disagrees with deterministic theories.

 

In writing a paper that is NOT an experimental paper, Bell has no need to delve into statistical methods. This was why I bolded your "no doubt" in the last post. You made a blatantly incorrect statement, prefaced by "no doubt."

 

In Aspect's experimental confirmation of Bell's inequalities statistical analysis obviously played a great deal of importance (as they do in any experiment).

If you have a problem with any of Aspect's statistical assumptions, point out where.

 

If you find mathematical flaws or unwarranted assumptions in Bell's proof, point it out, but be aware it doesn't depend on statistics, but probability theory. This is much better then arguing blindly, which is what you are doing if you haven't read any of the subject material on which you are commenting.

 

The problem with you is that you is that you still think like an animal. Do you honestly believe statements like "It seems as if you believe you know more about statistics then Bell and the physicists who accept his proof." have any signfigant meaning? Any logical value? They do not.

 

And niether do statements like "you still think like an animal." Like any human discourse, no one (not even yourself) is completely logical. So while I combat your claims with logic, I also occasionally find myself reacting poorly to overwhelming arrogance.

 

You dismiss WITHOUT EVEN READING a wide body of accepted scientific literature. You do this on the apparent presumption that you understand deductive logic better then any who have contributed to that body, despite some of the most honored minds of the century contributing. How is this logical at all? Since you want to insist that all statements be pure argument, I point out that this last paragraph isn't an attack on your position, but instead an argument for learning quantum theory.

-Will

[Kriminal99]

I'm very familiar with both physics and probability theory. The reason I didn't "combat your points directly" is that you addressed no part of Bell's theroem directly.

 

Now, quantum mechanics is easily the most successful scientific theory of all time. To assert that it is a temporary misstep (again, with no personal knowledge of the theory) is simply unwarranted arrogance.

 

 

 

The statement is not "determinism is false." The statement is that, on a quantum scale, nature is not locally deterministic. I hold that nature (and hence experiment) is the judge of what is or isn't true. All the logical argument in the world can't hold up to one good experiment. Quantum mechanics has been experimentally verified over and over again.

 

I've seen many pages of arguments demonstrating the logical impossibility of relativity, for instance, despite the fact that nature seems to hold to it.

 

 

 

As I said, Bell's inequalities allow one to seperate probabilistic theories with local deterministic sub-structure from those that do not.

 

 

 

What assumptions that Bell has made do you disagree with? You make sweeping general claims without at all spending any time looking at Bell's proof.

 

 

 

You do understand that there is a difference between probability theory and statistics? Bell's proof is a theoretical construct that shows that quantum mechanics disagrees with deterministic theories.

 

In writing a paper that is NOT an experimental paper, Bell has no need to delve into statistical methods. This was why I bolded your "no doubt" in the last post. You made a blatantly incorrect statement, prefaced by "no doubt."

 

In Aspect's experimental confirmation of Bell's inequalities statistical analysis obviously played a great deal of importance (as they do in any experiment).

If you have a problem with any of Aspect's statistical assumptions, point out where.

 

If you find mathematical flaws or unwarranted assumptions in Bell's proof, point it out, but be aware it doesn't depend on statistics, but probability theory. This is much better then arguing blindly, which is what you are doing if you haven't read any of the subject material on which you are commenting.

 

 

 

And niether do statements like "you still think like an animal." Like any human discourse, no one (not even yourself) is completely logical. So while I combat your claims with logic, I also occasionally find myself reacting poorly to overwhelming arrogance.

 

You dismiss WITHOUT EVEN READING a wide body of accepted scientific literature. You do this on the apparent presumption that you understand deductive logic better then any who have contributed to that body, despite some of the most honored minds of the century contributing. How is this logical at all? Since you want to insist that all statements be pure argument, I point out that this last paragraph isn't an attack on your position, but instead an argument for learning quantum theory.

-Will

 

Says you you are familiar with probability theory.

 

This is your argument: Everyone agrees with X so X must be true. If anyone uses this argument then their agreement with X is meaningless. Therefore the number of people who agree with X is meaningless. I call it a sheep argument, because it is the intuition (which might be based on poor inductive reasoning) of the average person which drives them to make this type of claim as opposed to consious reasoning. What is the difference between you and a sheep if you always argue based on your intuitions and nothing else? Nothing. Sadly they don't teach people these kind of basic reasoning skills while they are in school to train as Scientists and mathematicians... Maybe because they want you to not ask to many questions who knows. How they expect you to figure out anything undirected with out this foundation, I haven't a clue.

 

Rather than address all of your claims seperately, Ill just talk about the common problem with all of them and show how it applies to each.

 

Global Skepticism is always a given possibility - the possibility that everything is an illusion. It is also considered a trivial assumption that global skepticism is false. Not because it is likely to not be true, but because that what makes it a possibility also means we can have no evidence that it is true. If I was simply a brain in a vat that was recieving signals somehow that made me believe this world was true, the real world might have completely different physics and everything we believe might be wrong. But until we have any evidence of this then we must not worry about such possibilities. This can be considered a trivial possibility.

 

But short of global skepticism, there are always less universal forms of skepticism that cannot be so easily avoided. You order a pizza and use your credit card. How do you know that the clerk won't use your credit card illegally later. You don't - it happens... you trust it won't because it usually doesn't, but peopel that have had it happen are often more reluctant to use credit cards in the future. The problem with humans is once we get used to something turning out a certain way we start to think it is certain to be the case.

 

And if ever there was a best indicator that our past experience no longer holds about a new situation it is when we are dealing with something different than what our past experience represents - the more different the worse. In these cases we must be especially careful to not take anything for granted that may change, because you will make assumptions you don't realize you are making if you are not careful.

 

A good example of such assumptions are those related to experimentation. For example it is easy to assume that you have sampled unbiasedly for an experiment. Let's say you call people at home - your sample represents those that would be at home at the time you call- lets say you sample people from a street corner - your sample represents the people would would shop at nearby stores and work at nearby buisnesses. Maybe if you are so inclined you can use this to your advantage. Produce experimental results that support your cause, that have been biased in a way that would be difficult if not impossible to see from your documented results. To experiment with something like quantum physics, where your ability to observe anythign at all is greatly limited and where observation is known to affect the system, and then claim your results to have meaning is absurd. There are an infinite number of complex ways such experiments could be rendered useless without your being able to tell. Or if still useful as sources of information they certainly could not be considered unbiased scientific experiments with any degree of certainty.

 

Under the failing of a basic assumption which statistics, induction, and pretty much all human thought, we can have absolutely nothing to say about the situation. And this can and does occur, in an entirely deterministic system.

 

If you agree that we all still have biases and are not computers then you do not interpret a statement like "you still think like an animal" as a really big insult. Nor did I mean it as one. However I believe it is only in identifying how our biases affect our thinking and stoping them can we model intelligent thought. Tell me, how is thinking like "It is commonly accepted, so it must be true" intelligent thought and not our animalistic biases affecting our thinking? Is it not the same thing as when a pack wolf is beaten by another and then defends him with his life because the only thing more humiliating than having to submit to the other wolf is having the wolf who beat him beaten by someone else?

[TheBigDog]

Why would lack of free will make life pointless? You can still have a self in that, noone else has experienced exactly everything that you have no more and no less. Suppose we were as robots only acting as a result of input factors... yet we still feel. Would we need to prevent ourselves from feeling because we knew that it was deterministic and could consider the purpose of the feelings better than relying on the feelings themselves... and then wonder what the point of the purpose such feelings were meant to serve was? No- instead we could look at the feelings themselves (at least the good ones) as the point of life, and save rationalizing them away as a defense against the bad feelings.

 

I agree that you can make decisions based on imagination. However I disagree that this frees us from determinism. Perhaps imagination is deterministic. One might claim a fantasy movie to be a product of imagination. But what is a unicorn other than a horse with a goat's horn on its head? Perhaps imagination is nothing more than performing functions on that which we percieve, in a manner tha pleases us. If what we see and what pleases us are both deterministic in this case, then so is imagination.

Self: your consciousness of your own identity

 

Determinism means there is no thought. Determinism means there are no decisions. Determinism means there is only one pre-destined future.

 

If those things are true then I (or what I know as I) am an illusion. I am defined by my words, my deeds, my actions. All of these stem from my thoughts and my experiences. If they are all an illusion, there is no me, just a collection of atoms running the track of time to a certain end.

 

I reject that out of hand. You may like the comfort of cushioning yourself from the responsibilities of your own actions by blaming all the good and evil in the world upon the fates of physics. I do not. The road before me is untravelled, and unknown. I look behind me and see footsteps, all of them mine. And I remember the decisions I made to preceed each footfall.

 

I have free will. Your choice to acknowledge that or not is your own and has no bearing on me. Have a nice life.

 

Bill

[Kriminal99]

IMO Having people take responsibility for their actions is something that is done because doing so is beneficial not because the persons actions are not a product of their past experience.

 

I do not feel anyone is competent to judge another person, but rather only themselves. If a criminal says he did it because he had a bad childhood, I believe him and do not judge him or do anything just to hurt him. (even if it was me the crime was commited against) However that does not mean I can permit him to continue or not do what must me done to prevent him from doing it again. Similarly if I run a buisness and someone shows up late more often than other employees, I do not doubt there are good reasons for it. However if there are others that always overcome those same obstacles I can hire that person to take the late arrivers place. Having experienced this, the late arriver will know they must overcome these obstacles in the future to be a competitive employee and keep their job.

 

Morality is a sense of power, and wrong is any action in which you hurt more people than you help in which case those people you hurt will stop you. You only know something is wrong once you have been stopped at least once in the past for doing it, or can see how it is similar to something like this you have experienced in the past.

 

Anyone who goes around calling other people wrong and saying they get what they deserve for doing something IMO is ignorant and self centered.

[Erasmus00]

This is your argument: Everyone agrees with X so X must be true.

 

This is not my argument. My argument is this: Bell managed to show via pure mathematics that one can set certain limits on the probabilities of a locally deterministic system. This has nothing to do with statistical methods, and is a result of formal mathematics. If you have a problem with his mathematical proof, you are welcome to assert it.

 

Quantum mechanics strays beyond these limits. Therefore, if quantum mechanics is a correct theory we have to give up these ideas of local determinism.

 

Lastly, quantum mechanics has been experimentally verified, over and over again.

 

You may assert that these experiments are biased in some way, but I point out that some very simple facts have thus far only been succesfully described by quantum mechanics. The very fact that the your atoms are stable is a testament to the failures of classical physics.

 

And while you point out that experiments are difficult to perform in realms for which we have no experience: I point out that scientists have had decades to develop solid experimental methods. I also point out that some confirmations of quantum mechanics require virtually no sophistication and can easily be verified. Measuring the spectral lines of hydrogen is a lab frequently done in highschool.

 

Now, you can use your skepticism arguments to show that nothing is believable. Even deductive logic can be doubted. Therefore, its effectiveness as any kind of counter argument is limited, for it can "demonstrate" any proposition false.

-Will

[Freddy]

Self: your consciousness of your own identity

 

Determinism means there is no thought. Determinism means there are no decisions. Determinism means there is only one pre-destined future.

 

If those things are true then I (or what I know as I) am an illusion. I am defined by my words, my deeds, my actions. All of these stem from my thoughts and my experiences. If they are all an illusion, there is no me, just a collection of atoms running the track of time to a certain end.

 

I reject that out of hand. You may like the comfort of cushioning yourself from the responsibilities of your own actions by blaming all the good and evil in the world upon the fates of physics. I do not. The road before me is untravelled, and unknown. I look behind me and see footsteps, all of them mine. And I remember the decisions I made to preceed each footfall.

 

I have free will. Your choice to acknowledge that or not is your own and has no bearing on me. Have a nice life.

 

Bill

 

Can you provide empirical evidence to support your affirmation of having free will?

[Pyrotex]

Yes that's brilliant. I can't read. Thats it. :lol:

...Why waste my time reading the theory which I have no reason to believe is anything more than a temporary misstep? Reading an incorrect theory is not educating yourself on anything other than perhaps history....

Yes. You can't read. :-| You can't read any theory that you a priori decide is a temporary misstep. You will only read theories that are "meaningful" -- that defend and support your a priori bias. So, in a real sense, you can't read!!

 

Okay, that was a bit over the top. :D I have a similar bias. I have tried several times to read books written by "creationists". I was able to get more than half way through only ONE book, despite the fact that they tend to be short and use simple words. It's almost like putting my fingers in my mouth after going to the bathroom without washing my hands. There is a sense of potential "contamination". :frown:

 

An observation: your logic and rhetoric is first class. No kidding. Hat's off to you even though I don't support your conclusion. My refutation of determinism is based on a deep understanding of non-linear math. I do not know of any way of describing this "understanding" without using the math. But let me say just three things.

 

1. Given no way of experimentally discerning Det.ism from non-Det.ism, it may be valid to conclude that any differences between the two are virtually zero. In other words, there exists a class of Det. universe that is indistinguishable from a truly non-Det. universe--and we live in one.

 

2. "Deterministic" is a problematic description. WHO does the determining? If WE cannot determine, then do we have any basis for ASSUMING an imaginary entity who CAN determine? What does it MEAN to "determine"? Is this the same as "predicting with 100% accuracy"? I offer that it does not. Deterministic equations may be chosen that yield results that are inherently unpredictable. This can be done in EITHER a Det. or Non-Det. universe. (The Mandelbrot Function comes to mind.)

 

3. No more than 144 angels can dance on the head of a pin. So there! :)

[TheBigDog]

Can you provide empirical evidence to support your affirmation of having free will?

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[Pyrotex]

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I believe you are missing an "x", but otherwise a goddam solid affirmation!!

[Jehu]

In your opening statement, you did not declare your metaphysical stance, however, I think it safe to assume that it is that of a physicalist. If this is so, then this law of causality that, in your opinion, governs everything is necessarily a “physical law”, and so is invariable. By this I mean that in any two instances that involve the amalgamation of precisely the same chemical elements, for example, the resulting compound must be exactly the same. Furthermore, if you hold that human cognizance arises epiphenomenally out of those same physical laws, then the causal laws that govern cognitive activities such as reasoning must also be invariable. Now, if this is the case, then the amalgamation of any two logical premises must always result in exactly the same conclusion, and this one conclusion must necessarily be held to be valid by everyone. It is obvious, however, that no matter how valid a logical proof one may out forward, there will always be those people who chose to deny that proof in favour of their own deep rooted beliefs. Is this not true?

 

Regards, Jehu

[IDMclean]

The proof is in the pudding.

 

Now, if this is the case, then the amalgamation of any two logical premises must always result in exactly the same conclusion, and this one conclusion must necessarily be held to be valid by everyone.

 

You prove the point of in-det.ism, Jehu. In experiments set up, as exact as possible, with as exact of situation and setup, it has been experimentally verified that the out come of said experiment is only capable of being expressed in terms of probable out comes, that the exact absolute prediction of the experiment was not observed.

[ughaibu]

Does determinism rely on the assumption that reality is in every way finite?

[infamous]

Determinism can be broken down to this simple concept: Any action in nature can be explained as being subject to the previous set of conditions. IMHO, as we learn more about the quantum world, we will come to understand that this also holds true even in areas we now view as random events...........Infy

[ughaibu]

But if there is an infinite element, any set of conditions is a theoretical convenience, not a quality of reality.

[infamous]

But if there is an infinite element, any set of conditions is a theoretical convenience, not a quality of reality.

Only the set of conditions just prior to the event need not be infinite...................Infy