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/sci/ - Science & Math

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3222612 No.3222612 [Reply] [Original]

Is the universe completely deterministic?

If so, does that depress you at all?

>> No.3222620

Nope. Even in a nondeterministic universe we can only see one timeline anyway.

Besides, the processes that determine my decisions are part of me. If I was non-deterministic I'd just be picking things at random instead of evaluating them.

>> No.3222627

The universe doesn't exist at all.

>> No.3222633

>>3222612
Yes.
No.

>> No.3222640

>>3222627
Even if it doesn't, I still want to know what kind of universe it is that doesn't exist and why the other things in it that don't exist obey the same non-existent physical laws.

>> No.3222661

in before arguments about QM by people who don't know what the Born rule is

>> No.3222664

We don't know, but the most accepted theory is that it's not: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation_of_quantum_mechanics

It's questionable whether this carries over to human will. It doesn't bother me either way, though its answer will settle many thorny ethical issues - such as how crime should be delt with - for good.

>> No.3222695

>>3222664
Assuming that quantum particles behave non-deterministically is less supported than the assumption that they do, but only through immeasurable stimuli.

>> No.3222720

No, determinism is essentially a religious belief.

>> No.3222725

>>3222664
"All this familiar story is true, but it leaves out an irony. Bohr's version of quantum mechanics was deeply flawed, but not for the reason Einstein thought. The Copenhagen interpretation describes what happens when an observer makes a measurement, but the observer and the act of measurement are themselves treated classically. This is surely wrong: Physicists and their apparatus must be governed by the same quantum mechanical rules that govern everything else in the universe. But these rules are expressed in terms of a wave function (or, more precisely, a state vector) that evolves in a perfectly deterministic way. So where do the probabilistic rules of the Copenhagen interpretation come from?

Considerable progress has been made in recent years toward the resolution of the problem, which I cannot go into here. It is enough to say that neither Bohr nor Einstein had focused on the real problem with quantum mechanics. The Copenhagen rules clearly work, so they have to be accepted. But this leaves the task of explaining them by applying the deterministic equation for the evolution of the wave function, the Schrödinger equation, to observers and their apparatus."

>> No.3222733

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it.

>> No.3222735
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3222735

>>3222612
>entirety of existence on a set course only observable from sources outside of all existence
>so long as I am only but a fraction of that system I am still capable of free will
>I'm OK with this

>> No.3222752

>>3222720

This is true. However, what if religions are right?

Clearly, the solution is to find God, and kill him.