Determinism

[remm]

-- --
I have recently learned about this idea that the universe could be deterministic. What this means it, that if you could know exactly everything about the current state of the universe, you could predict everything that would ever happen in the future, because everything would follow a set of rules (eg physics).

But what does this mean in terms of people? Are people deterministic? If you knew somebody's history, and their values, would you be able to predict their every move, based upon the environments they encounter? If determinism is true, then yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

Tell me your thoughts on this, I'm very interested.
And what could it mean for the concept of free-will?
-- --

[squibbles]

I think yes...ish

Let's say that you decide one day to drink a bottle and a half of tequila straight. You vomit, pass out and feel awful the next day. Do you do the same thing the next week? No, probably not, because you've learned that it's a really bad idea. While spontaneity does exist, I believe that almost, if not all decisions are made with at least some consideration to the past. If someone was aware of the tequila incident, they probably will know that you'll not do it again, and really, that's just a lesser form of determinism. There's no reason why the same idea wouldn't work (hypothetically) on a grander scale, but for the concept to work, the person would literally have to know everything about you. Everything you've experienced, seen, heard, ect.

So, sure, it's possible, however only from some kind of omniscient entity, because to know anyone so intimately is obviously impossible.

[Rose]

I've read about this before, and from what I can recall,

And what could it mean for the concept of free-will?

Determinism and free will are basically opposites. They can't coexist. However, that's just my (tentative) conclusion, and I'd love to hear counterpoints.

[Seneschal]

I've read about this before, and from what I can recall,

And what could it mean for the concept of free-will?

Determinism and free will are basically opposites. They can't coexist. However, that's just my (tentative) conclusion, and I'd love to hear counterpoints.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

[Rose]

I've read about this before, and from what I can recall,

And what could it mean for the concept of free-will?

Determinism and free will are basically opposites. They can't coexist. However, that's just my (tentative) conclusion, and I'd love to hear counterpoints.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

Aha! I had had thoughts along that line, but I couldn't articulate them in my own head, much less in writing. So, I think the biggest question is, what exactly is "free will"?

[smartalco]

People are deterministic in that a set of inputs (environment, prior knowledge, etc) determines our output (thoughts and actions and such). Given 2 exactly identical situations (to where you have no knowledge of the other setup, and even the current neurological activity in your brain is the same) I think the outcome to both will always be identical. Kinda a souring thought on free will, which brings up all kinds of other implications, but I leave those to philosophy majors.

[atomizer]

While it is possible to get away from quantum mechanics with some assumptions (which don't make much sense, actually, but still), I don't think determinism has any value in the "practical" sense, e.g. you will never be able to predict what exactly will one do given all the observable information about him in the past anyway, because the observable information is very limited and cannot include the quantum states.
So, my opinion is that while this theory may be interesting for it's philosophy value, I don't think it is anything one should "believe" in.

[SlappyMcGee]

Free will: the ability to choose between two or more options based on your previous knowledge, experience and genetic brainthing.

Determinism: The idea that what you would choose would not be random, but rather predictable given all of the knowledge, information and physical understanding of our world.

It's completely logical but also rather pointless. If you know exactly every variable of a sporting event, you could predict the winner and the score, but you can't. Similarly, one could predict this course of events given sufficient information, but nobody on our plane of existence has that information.

But I think there are levels of actual incalculable random at a subatomic level, so all of this determinism nonsense is moot, anyway.

[ENT474]

Well, according to quantum physics (or so I understand), when one shoots a subatomic particle, it will end up anywhere, even Mars (or farther.) The probability that it wil end up on Mars is so extremely slim that it probably won't happen (basically, if the particle was a soccer ball, it will MOST LIKELY end up at the place it's "supposed" to, with smaller probabilities farther from that point.) As to determinism, I think that this is true. "Free will" seems to be just "spontaniety". If I ask you to do something random, in completely identical scenarios, you will probably do the same thing. The movement of a subatomic particle probably won't do a WHOLE lot about this.

Uh, unless you like the chaos theory and use it extensively :P

[Donfuy]

I do believe determinism exists, just because I believe we react to things following a pattern . x thing makes you wanna y, not z. so you y cause x. you /could/ do z, but if you did, there would be another variable involved that would make you believe z is a better choice. So since you always choose what you think is the best choice, free will doesn't exist.

[scythe]

So, I think the biggest question is, what exactly is "free will"?

The problem with "free will" is it tends to be whatever the author of a given academic paper needs it to be in order to support their conclusion. If the guy is trying to disprove free will, he picks a definition that is impossible; if he's trying to prove free will, he picks a definition that is tautological.

I think the only reasonable approach is to analyze how we actually make decisions -- if you're trying to determine how a person is going to act you learn a lot more by testing your predictions than by trying to prove they will or won't work.

Incidentally there is quantum mechanics in the function of the brain, but the function of the brain does not in anyway resemble a quantum computer as defined by Richard Feynman (fun fact: Feynman also invented quantum computers).

[Brocerius]

@Romaniac it is worth noting that a deterministic universe would not necessarily be predictable. In fact, it would most probably not. Predictability and determination are not as closely related as people think. Predictability is a measurement of human capacity, determination describes a property of reality.

Analogy: just because I don't know the configuration of every particle in this room, does not mean they are not arranged.

[otters~1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohist ... ctional%29

[otters~1]

I was under the impression that quantum physics essentially disproved determinism -- that there's an inherent amount of randomness present in the universe, at a subatomic level.

I think that has been said already.

In closing, have another link. http://asofterworld.com/index.php?id=670

[Scrivener]

Laplace's Demon.

Also, "I refute it thus."

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

I was under the impression that quantum physics essentially disproved determinism -- that there's an inherent amount of randomness present in the universe, at a subatomic level.

scythe will be able to kick my ass if I'm wrong about this, but...
Yeah, as I understand it, things aren't so deterministic at the quantum scale. However, once you approach any appreciable scale (e.g. the size of a nucleon), probabilities that matter will act in the ways non-quantum-scale physics would predict are so close to 100% that they may as well be 100%. Note that neurons, relative to these scales, are fucking huge, and therefore I posit that humans will act deterministically (lim_{n -> 100} n)% of the time.
But I will also happily concede that because we are not aware of all the details which influence how reality will behave exactly, we have the illusion of free will, which is functionally equivalent to actual free will in the realm of human experience.

[otters~1]

I was under the impression that quantum physics essentially disproved determinism -- that there's an inherent amount of randomness present in the universe, at a subatomic level.

scythe will be able to kick my ass if I'm wrong about this, but...
Yeah, as I understand it, things aren't so deterministic at the quantum scale. However, once you approach any appreciable scale (e.g. the size of a nucleon), probabilities that matter will act in the ways non-quantum-scale physics would predict are so close to 100% that they may as well be 100%. Note that neurons, relative to these scales, are fucking huge, and therefore I posit that humans will act deterministically (lim_{n -> 100} n)% of the time.

Man, Asimov was just absolutely spot on with psychohistory. What fun.

[Kablizzy]

and therefore I posit that humans will act deterministically (lim_{n -> 100} n)% of the time.
But I will also happily concede that because we are not aware of all the details which influence how reality will behave exactly, we have the illusion of free will, which is functionally equivalent to actual free will in the realm of human experience.

Suki = Blizz

[ENT474]

Schrodinger's cat could disprove that...

However, outside of quantum theory paradoxes, determinism it is!

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Schrodinger's cat could disprove that...

No, don't dot-dot-dot. Go ahead and explain yourself.

[ENT474]

Schrodinger's cat could disprove that...

No, don't dot-dot-dot. Go ahead and explain yourself.

Alright, alright. I racked my brain, and here's what my puny self could come up with.

So, due to quantum physics (at least what is held to be true), a particle can be in two states at once. So Schrodinger proposed a thought experiment: There is a cat in a box with poisonous gas and a radioactive particle that has a fifty percent chance to decay in some period of time (an hour, so says Schrodinger.) Decay would cause the release the gas, killing the cat. So, since nobody is observing the particle, it could be nondecayed or decayed. Quantum physics says this means it is in both states (experiments similar to this have proven this.) As soon as the box is peeked into, the system is "collapsed", and there is an obvious state once observed. However, when the box is closed, after an hour (or I guess at any time), the cat is both alive and dead. Either both are alive, or both are dead. He called this "entanglement". This "entanglement" makes mass aligning much faster than it should be, and basically organizes chaos. Even far away small particles (up to buckyball-size, and probably larger) interact with each other almost impossibly. Our brain might not be as organized without this quantum physics stuff. Also, the particles could always be organized slightly differently, producing a large effect on whatever is near it.

I think I just proved the intrusion of quantum physics into the real world. I'm too tired to take this one step farther.

Also, with predicting people, to make the best guess possible, you even need to know every single detail about him, like to the speck of dust that fell on his head. And even then it might be wrong.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Right, yeah, I'm familiar with Schroedinger's Cat, quantum entanglement, the double-slit experiment, the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, etc. I was curious as to why you thought these things disproved anything that was said in this thread.

[Tanner]

This may be the trap that Suki is trying to get you to fall into but I'm going to trigger it now anyway.

Schrödinger's cat is probably the single most misunderstood aspect of quantum mechanics. It isn't meant to be, in any way, a proof of "the intrusion of quantum physics into the real world". Exactly the opposite, it's meant to criticize the way that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is (or isn't, more accurately) applied to everyday objects. Rather than bumbling through my own explanation, I'll borrow from the words of an expert in relativistic nuclear collisions.

The point of the Schrodinger's cat experiment is to highlight and even poke fun at the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. The 'boundary' between the classical and quantum world where wavefunction collapse occurs is not very well defined in textbook quantum mechanics.

When you set up a reasonable experiment, it is usually quite obvious when and how the wavefunctions collapse - when something hits the detector! How the wavefunction collapses is also obvious - in such a way as to either trigger or not trigger a detector reading.

So QM is great for predicting the outcome most experiments - which is really the job of a physical model of the universe, but philosophically it is deeply unsatisfying. We don't get a clear picture of how the universe functions. The only thing that anyone can do is to set up a hypothetical experiment, and then let common sense dictate what constitutes a detector and how and when the wavefunction should collapse. But how is this process of collapse actually happening microscopically, every moment, in every part of the universe? This is an open question that is only currently getting some of the attention that it deserves.

In the case of the cat, a cat is clearly a classical object. No experiment has ever seen interference between different states of a cat in superposition - the idea is absurd. So the cat is a detector - or even better, the poison gas trap, also a classical object, is a detector. It either fires or it doesn't, and the microscopic system of the decaying nucleus collapses.
Ultimately, every 'classical' object is ultimately comprised of billions of quantum objects - atoms, and so one should ask how is this collapse transition happening. To probe this, one needs to perform experiments to look more closely at objects that are not obviously classical, like a cat, or obviously quantum, like an atom. What about a ball of 200 atoms - a quantum dot? How about a vibrating bridge made of a few thousand atoms cooled to microKelvin temperatures? These experiments are beginning to be performed.

My guess is that the process of collapse will be one day properly understood in the statistical mechanics of the 'classical object' which is really a huge quantum system of a myriad of particles.

[squibbles]

This may be the trap that Suki is trying to get you to fall into but I'm going to trigger it now anyway.

Schrödinger's cat is probably the single most misunderstood aspect of quantum mechanics. It isn't meant to be, in any way, a proof of "the intrusion of quantum physics into the real world". Exactly the opposite, it's meant to criticize the way that the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is (or isn't, more accurately) applied to everyday objects. Rather than bumbling through my own explanation, I'll borrow from the words of an expert in relativistic nuclear collisions.

The point of the Schrodinger's cat experiment is to highlight and even poke fun at the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. The 'boundary' between the classical and quantum world where wavefunction collapse occurs is not very well defined in textbook quantum mechanics.

When you set up a reasonable experiment, it is usually quite obvious when and how the wavefunctions collapse - when something hits the detector! How the wavefunction collapses is also obvious - in such a way as to either trigger or not trigger a detector reading.

So QM is great for predicting the outcome most experiments - which is really the job of a physical model of the universe, but philosophically it is deeply unsatisfying. We don't get a clear picture of how the universe functions. The only thing that anyone can do is to set up a hypothetical experiment, and then let common sense dictate what constitutes a detector and how and when the wavefunction should collapse. But how is this process of collapse actually happening microscopically, every moment, in every part of the universe? This is an open question that is only currently getting some of the attention that it deserves.

In the case of the cat, a cat is clearly a classical object. No experiment has ever seen interference between different states of a cat in superposition - the idea is absurd. So the cat is a detector - or even better, the poison gas trap, also a classical object, is a detector. It either fires or it doesn't, and the microscopic system of the decaying nucleus collapses.
Ultimately, every 'classical' object is ultimately comprised of billions of quantum objects - atoms, and so one should ask how is this collapse transition happening. To probe this, one needs to perform experiments to look more closely at objects that are not obviously classical, like a cat, or obviously quantum, like an atom. What about a ball of 200 atoms - a quantum dot? How about a vibrating bridge made of a few thousand atoms cooled to microKelvin temperatures? These experiments are beginning to be performed.

My guess is that the process of collapse will be one day properly understood in the statistical mechanics of the 'classical object' which is really a huge quantum system of a myriad of particles.

"YOU ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD", says Tanner.