I realize this message was posted 3 years ago. I don't know if this guy is even here at the forum anymore. But for those of you interested in this thread, I will provide my personal fodder.
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Originally Posted by archetypal fool
That isn't necessarily true. In a similar thread, it was shown that in quantum mechanical theory, randomness is integral, because the universe breaks down into probabilistic terms. Note Bell's Theorem (here), for which I haven't found a non-mathematical/non-esoteric explanation, so I'll go ahead and simplify it here:
Assuming information doesn't travel faster than the speed of light (a trait which has been both theoretically and experimentally verified), then there exists no local hidden variable within space which effects any event. Bell's Theorem has already been verified many times experimentally.
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archetypal fool's simplification is okay. Allow me to provide a simplified explanation of Bell's Theorem. My simplified explanation is contained in three parts.
Part I. Hidden variables.
"Hidden variables" is a fancy way of saying that the particles in question do not have a deeper structure that our microscopy has not yet uncovered. Another way of saying this is that fundamental particles are fundamental.
Part II. The three assumptions.
(A) Logic is valid.
(B) There is an objective reality separate from observers.
(C) All physical interactions take place locally.
Local interactions just means no particle effects any other unless they touch in space and in time. If this is not the case, such interactions are called "non-local".
Part III. The theorem.
Bell's theorem says that at least one of the three assumptions must be false. It does not specify which one. A funny way of saying this is that Bell's theorem is a genie that hands you three scrolls and asks you to "pick two" for which you will carry away as being true statements.
If you study physics as a student in an academic university, you will be told that A and B are true, and that C is false. This should explain why wikipedia articles about entanglement all make that claim something like this, "Bell's Theorem proves that there are non-local interactions in the universe". This has a very strict definition. It means the effects are propagated instantaneously. Relativity does not allow a finite speed that is greater than the speed of light in a vacuum. However, relativity does not explicitly rule out "infinite" speed.
The academic take is a very conservative interpretation of entanglement. Bell's theorem actually allows any combination of the three assumptions to be false. It even allows all of them to be false.
That concludes my simplified description of Bell's Theorem. A more detailed discussion would get into redux of the assumptions, and multiverses.
The middle assumption, B, is that an objective reality exists separate from observers. This assumption obviously gets a lot of lip-service from philosophers and mystics. This problem is more epistemological, and is related to Kant and Idealism. It says nothing of the subject of determinism and randomness that is being bandied about in this thread. Its contention is rather more hallucinogenic than that.
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Because of this, the most elementary properties of the universe are inherently random (since there is randomness in probability), and no prediction can be 100% true. Therefor, relating to a previous topic, if you were to go back in time one year and observe yourself up until the present, there is a chance that this reality is not the same as the reality you traveled from. This implies that the universe isn't deterministic, even though in our scale it projects the illusion of determinism.
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This does not follow from Bell's Theorem. Sorry to whoever wrote this.
