/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.12209605]

How does quantum randomness make sense? Is it truly random like I've been told? How does truly random make sense? It must be decisive to exist, but true randomness is not decisive and thus cannot exist. There has to be something that causes it to be heads rather than tails, it cannot simply, randomly be one of the two. Because what causes it to become decisively heads in the end, is not random. So... what?

[Anonymous No.12209611]

>It must be decisive to exist
says who?

[Anonymous No.12209615]

>>12209605
you might as well ask a dog how a TV works. they might "get" that humans use it to cause pictures and sounds, but they don't even fully comprehend artificial pictures and sounds, they could never figure out how a TV works, or how a phone works. that's us with quantum mechanics; the mechanisms are logical, but so completely complex and outside of general human capabilities that all we can do is send the smartest geniuses to go try and make some sort of tangential sense out of it.

[Anonymous No.12209656]

>>12209611
if it has chosen a out of a and b paths then it has exerted a bias for b.

[Anonymous No.12209667]

Is the universe discrete or continuous?

[Anonymous No.12209675]

>>12209667
both

[Anonymous No.12209678]

>>12209611
A random number generator that is truly random can pick between 1 and 3 for example, and if it is to pick 1 or 2 or 3 then it must have some decisiveness in order to settle on a single number, therefore, it cannot be truly random, as what is causing it to settle on one number over the others?

[Anonymous No.12209685]

>>12209605
quantum particles safety check all actions performed before applying them. any action that would destabilize it, or any nearby particles (ie destroy the universe and the fabric of reality), is immediately rolled back, and the alternate movement option is chosen. this gives it the illusion of randomness, because you can't accurately predict a subatomic particle looking into the future and choosing the appropriate action.

[Anonymous No.12209702]

>>12209675
uhhh ohhh

[Anonymous No.12209703]

>>12209605
It may not make sense to you but every experiment we have performed agrees with the premise it is completely random. No matter how you think the Universe should be has no reflection on how it actually is.

[Anonymous No.12209711]

>>12209703
But that is not proof, what if the experiment is just proof that you are unable to detect what is causing the "randomness?" And you are just incapable of predicting the outcome of the randomness? Your experiments could be hinting toward that no? That you are simply incapable of detecting the cause of the randomness?

[Anonymous No.12209731]

>>12209605
i think it's more that there are so many variables at play as to be effectively random. random in the sense of unpredictable, not in the sense of probabilistically uniform. i like to imagine that there is some deep down whatever-it-is that if we understood, we could make accurate predictions every time. i don't think it's like, if you go back in time play it forward again, that you'd get a different result from absolutely identical input conditions. i think it's that we are unable to control for all the variables.

[Anonymous No.12209735]

>>12209711
Well duh. That's the scientific method. Come up with a theory, see if it matches current observations, carry on making new observations. Quantum theory is the most tested and precisely measured of any in human existence. Shits random bro.

[Anonymous No.12209742]

>>12209735
But you are incapable of confirming whether there is an outside force controlling the randomness that you are incapable of measuring. There must be something that determines which of the outcomes manifest otherwise one would be incapable of manifesting over the others.

[Anonymous No.12209751]

>>12209742
> There must be something that determines which of the outcomes manifest
That is the collapse of the wave function and yes how that occurs is not understood to this day. However you do not need to know how it happens for the theory to work.

[Anonymous No.12209752]

>>12209703
>>12209735
There are actually positive reasons to think QM is indeterministic (within a single-world ontology that is), not just our current inability to predict it. See Bell's theorem. You can't outright disprove hidden variables, as you can't really disprove anything in science, but it's still stronger evidence than just our current best model's being indeterministic.

[Anonymous No.12209753]

>>12209605
>Is it truly random?
For you

[Anonymous No.12209758]

>>12209751
So, I guess that does confirm my question though. So that agrees with what I thought I guess... that's all I was trying to say.

[Anonymous No.12209760]

>>12209615
based and compiler pilled

[Anonymous No.12209766]

>>12209752
How can you even deny hidden variables though? Isn't it necessary that something causes one particular outcome to arise over the others?

[Anonymous No.12209777]

>>12209766
Bell's theorem disproves all the sane hidden variables theories.

[Anonymous No.12209782]

>>12209777
What disproves the fact that it picks one outcome over the others at a point in time, hinting that it necessarily needs to favor one particular outcome over the others at that particular point in time, proving it needs to be decisive in some way?

[Anonymous No.12209793]

>>12209766
>How can you even deny hidden variables though?
You have to look up on Bell's theorem, it's a pretty long technical story. But basically as far as I understand it it would allow faster than light communication, which results in causality paradoxes according to special relativity, or else those hidden variables would have to be *in principle* 100% unobservable, making them equivalent to basically not existing.

>Isn't it necessary that something causes one particular outcome to arise over the others?
Everything needing a cause leads to infinite regress, which is hardly less absurd than something having no cause.

That being said, you might want to look on the many worlds interpretation, which is deterministic in a sense, but not in a hidden variable way.

[Anonymous No.12209804]

>>12209793
He found a way to prove that a hidden variable in quantum randomness would somehow imply faster than light travel?

[Anonymous No.12209807]

>>12209782
Bell's theorem doesn't say anything about that. It's kind of tricky to explain the intricacies of the equation and I'm too dumb to do so. But basically it gives one answer if QM has hidden variables and another if no hidden variables are involved. Every experiment give a result that agrees with the latter.

[Anonymous No.12209817]

>>12209807
So maybe it's not a hidden variable, but logically I don't see how something can be random and have no means of decisiveness, because, at a particular point in time it is forced to be decisive by picking one outcome over the others.

[Anonymous No.12209828]

>>12209817
You are essentially repeating what Einstein believed when he said that "God doesn't play dice with the Universe." That is classical macro-world thinking. It does not apply at the quantum level.

[Anonymous No.12209845]

>>12209605
Random is just an idealized error. Nothing is truly 50/50 and nothing is truly 2. Same platonic ideal.

[Anonymous No.12209846]

>>12209817
Bell's theorem doesn't disprove hidden variables
It just proves that they would be by definition un-falsifiable by anybody within the system
I think the main issue is people are uneasy about the idea of the boundaries of the knowable

[Anonymous No.12209868]

>>12209828
>>12209846
But any quantum understanding is only describable by human understanding anyways. And logic is something that would apply to the quantum world too, it cannot just be a random outcome without something choosing one outcome over the other. It is a mathematically solid idea, because it is picking one outcome at one particular point in time then something must set that one outcome aside at that one point in time, necessarily. It's the identity principle. A = A. If I pick a number from 1 to 10, then I have to pick a number from 1 to 10 meaning I need decisiveness in my decision.

There is no "cop out" just because there is no proof of a known causation yet does not confirm it is really random.

[Anonymous No.12209870]

>>12209846
I thought it disproved all the simplest and most likely H-V scenarios but yeah some more esoteric theories would take much more complicated experiments to rule out if possible at all.