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Old 04-20-2007, 06:15 PM   #9 (permalink)
filtherton
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Location: In the land of ice and snow.
Roach, when i think determinism, i think of the idea that everything that happens is the direct result of what happened before it to the extent that all of existence could theoretically be reduced to a set of rules and a set of initial conditions. Then, if you had a ridiculously powerful computer you could program it with these rules and initial conditions, hit "run", and watch everything that has and will happen, and because of its deterministic nature everything you'd see would be the only things that could have happened. I don't know if you've ever played the card game "war", but if you're familiar with it, it's completely deterministic: the outcome is determined solely by the initial conditions, i.e. the cards each person starts with.


The problem with studying things at the subatomic level is that our observations can alter things- that photon that bounced off that electron and ended up in our eye altered the trajectory of the the electron. This doesn't mean that the electron necessarily has completely random behavior, it just means that we don't have the means to predict that behavior.

I think that it is important to make a distinction between things that are predictable and things that are determined. I don't think it is accurate to claim that the lack of a deterministic model implies a lack of determinism. Science shouldn't be confused with reality - they are two different things. Science attempts to be a useful model of reality, while reality just does what it does with little regard for the accuracy of science. Atoms didn't wait for the plum pudding model to be debunked to develop orbitals, they presumably had them all along.

Furthermore, i don't see how any dogmatic scientist could deny that the universe is completely deterministic - as far as i can tell, the scientific method is predicated on the notion that ultimately things behave in a predictable, explainable manner.
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