I'm and Atheist and Believe in Predeterminism: Prove Me Wrong

[m_the0ry]

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Is this correct? I thought the uncertainty principle went deeper than this. Whereby it's not just the practical impossiblity of determining both location and velocity exactly with a probe, but an inherent uncertainty for the two taken together as a matter of the actual state.

PairTheBoard

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Planck's constant defines the resolution of quantum mechanics and it inherantly quantizes energy. Unless we can quantize energy with greater resolution than the photon there is no way to determine the mechanisms underlying quantum mechanics. Yes, EPR does disprove locality and allows for measurements without disturbing an entangled particle. But it has been shown that these measurements reveal no new information to the environmental system and are just a formalism for thinking as a particle as independent instead of as a quantum system - shown in how entangled particles cannot enable faster-than-light communication.

I guess my point is that while it is definitely possible that there are underlying mechanisms to quantum randomness, it's an all or nothing deal where we have to abandon all of the theory if we assume there are no purely random measurements.

[Phil153]

The disproof of determinism is reductio ad absurdum.

[Metric]

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For example, the orbit of electrons around the nucleus of an atom are governed by laws that we don't currently understand and are not simply random.

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What do you mean by "we" exactly?

[vhawk01]

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The disproof of determinism is reductio ad absurdum.

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Can you explain quickly? You don't need to go into great detail, just give me the highlights. Not being sarcastic.

[m_the0ry]

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The disproof of determinism is reductio ad absurdum.

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Can you explain quickly? You don't need to go into great detail, just give me the highlights. Not being sarcastic.

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Its sort of like the first cause argument. If everything has an explaination then explainations have explainations etc. etc. on to infinity and there is no final explaination because it has to have substituent explainations.

[Piers]

Why bring an omnipotent being into the equation. That’s like assuming that you can divide by zero so that you can prove that 2+2=4.

[John21]

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Now probability is not definate so don't anyone bring it up... There is room for change, it is only less likely.

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Apparently, I'm still in the Dark Ages. Can someone help me out here?

Has it been "proven" that the probability of having a precise symmetric initial condition is zero?

What am I missing here? To the best of my knowledge the laws of nature permit two probabilities that are exactly equal and from this we're saying that the state of the universe must be unsymmetric?

Even though all observable laws/forces don't display any lack of symmetry? Has the first cause of causes become unsymmetry?

I'm completely lost in this discussion, so any explanations or links would be appreciated.

[Skidoo]

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For example, if you know the position of a ball and the forces acting on it, you can predict its trajectory to infinity. Just imagine that ball on a subatomic scale. Now, take away the omnipotent being that the trajectory for every particle, although impossible for humans to figure out, would still theoretically be there.

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The so-called "elementary" thingies do not have proper trajectories in the defined sense of a macroscopic ball, for example. (Or they do in a way that is unobservable, if you buy that line of questionable science.) There simply isn't a trajectory that is "falsifiable" (if you don't mind) by means of observation, therefore there isn't one at all, really. The concept is just not applicable to the very small.

[oneeye13]

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Clearly, I obviously prefer the latter. As Einstein put it, "God does not play dice with the Universe."

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i think it is accepted that einstein was wrong here. hawking said something to the effect of "god does play dice and they are loaded".

also, this is not a new idea. google "local hidden variable theory". i think testable hypotheses came out of this idea, and it made predictions that didn't correspond to reality. read about experiments by john bell.

i guess this probably won't change your point of view, but on some level i guess you could argue that there isn't a difference between the two cases. seems like determinism probably doesn't exist on any meaningful level.