Quote:
Originally posted by Kyo
Consider this: if particle A collides with particle B under some set of conditions, there is a law that governs exactly where those particles will move, at what velocity, acceleration, etc. There is a law that governs what energy is released where, in what form and quantity. If we expand that to include every particle/wave in the universe, it is theoretically possible to have predicted every single event in history from the Big Bang forward.
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Determinism is dead.
Randomness is inherrent in the Quantum mechanical viewpoint.
If you take a radioactive atom, there is no law governing as to when it will decay. We can give it a statistical analysis, and declare that the average length of time that such an atom will decay is known (a.k.a. the half-life), so on the large scale we can usually predict things...we can describe evry acurately, the amount of readioation given off by a "lump" of radioactive material, but we cannot predict the activity of a single atom.
Couple this with chaos theory and our ability to predict the future is pretty damn pathetic! (The decay of a single atom in Tokyo could cause a hurricane in Florida?)