(April 11, 2014 at 6:07 pm)Chuck Wrote:

(April 11, 2014 at 6:05 pm)Heywood Wrote: Negative Chuck,

A god of the gaps argument requires a gap in our understanding. This is not the case as we understand there are no local physical hidden variables behind the randomness at the quantum level.

There is a gap in our understanding. We do not know what, if anything of any type, is there. So you insert "god" when "nothing", based on our best understanding, serves just as well and vastly more economically.

That's fine....except we know physical local variables are not there. So the "gap" can only be filled by something non physical....non local.

Inserting "nothing" is burying your head in the sand and pretending there isn't a problem to explain.

(April 11, 2014 at 6:17 pm)Heywood Wrote:

(April 11, 2014 at 6:07 pm)Chuck Wrote: There is a gap in our understanding. We do not know what, if anything of any type, is there. So you insert "god" when "nothing", based on our best understanding, serves just as well and vastly more economically.

That's fine....except we know physical local variables are not there. So the "gap" can only be filled by something non physical....non local.

Inserting "nothing" is burying your head in the sand and pretending there isn't problem to explain.

Uh, no. non-local doesn't mean non physical in the sense that it can't be observed.

Nothing is not burying your head in the sand. It is a recognition that collective properties may have fundamental building blocks that can not be subdivided and does not derive from anything finer.

What are the constituent parts of a fundamental particle? Nothing. The fundamental particle derive its properties from nothing other than its own existence. "What about the particle gives it its property" stops having meaning when one reachs the most fundamental particle.

At certain level, randomness may be a fundamental property of the the most basic building block of the universe. Nothing in the building block gives it that property. The property is intrinsic to the building block itself.

It may be that some or all building blocks in the universe is infinitely divisible. But our best mathematical description of what we see suggest that is not the case. The universe appears to not be infinitely divisible in any of its basic properties. At some level, nothing deeper is there.

(April 11, 2014 at 6:25 pm)Chuck Wrote:

(April 11, 2014 at 6:17 pm)Heywood Wrote: That's fine....except we know physical local variables are not there. So the "gap" can only be filled by something non physical....non local.

Inserting "nothing" is burying your head in the sand and pretending there isn't problem to explain.

Uh, no. non-local doesn't mean non physical in the sense that it can't be observed.

Nothing is not burying your head in the sand. It is a recognition that collective properties may have fundamental building blocks that can not be subdivided and does not derive from anything finer.

What are the constituent parts of a fundamental particle? Nothing. The fundamental particle derive its properties from nothing other than its own existence. "What about the particle gives it its property" stops having meaning when one reachs the most fundamental particle.

At certain level, randomness may be a fundamental property of the the most basic building block of the universe. Nothing in the building block gives it that property. The property is intrinsic to the building block itself.

It may be that some or all building blocks in the universe is infinitely divisible. But our best mathematical description of what we see suggest that is not the case. The universe appears to not be infinitely divisible in any of its basic properties. At some level, nothing deeper is there.

ummm.....no. Randomness isn't a property of matter. Randomness is a property of events.

(April 11, 2014 at 6:52 pm)Heywood Wrote:

(April 11, 2014 at 6:25 pm)Chuck Wrote: Uh, no. non-local doesn't mean non physical in the sense that it can't be observed.

Nothing is not burying your head in the sand. It is a recognition that collective properties may have fundamental building blocks that can not be subdivided and does not derive from anything finer.

What are the constituent parts of a fundamental particle? Nothing. The fundamental particle derive its properties from nothing other than its own existence. "What about the particle gives it its property" stops having meaning when one reachs the most fundamental particle.

At certain level, randomness may be a fundamental property of the the most basic building block of the universe. Nothing in the building block gives it that property. The property is intrinsic to the building block itself.

It may be that some or all building blocks in the universe is infinitely divisible. But our best mathematical description of what we see suggest that is not the case. The universe appears to not be infinitely divisible in any of its basic properties. At some level, nothing deeper is there.

ummm.....no. Randomness isn't a property of matter. Randomness is a property of events.

Such distinction is not valid at Planck level.

(April 11, 2014 at 7:02 pm)Chuck Wrote:

(April 11, 2014 at 6:52 pm)Heywood Wrote: ummm.....no. Randomness isn't a property of matter. Randomness is a property of events.

Such distinction is not valid at Planck level.

First time I have ever seen you hand wave Chuck.

Btw Heywood involving god to explain randomness is argument from ignorance.

It's not a hand wave. Event is a menifestation of change over time. According to quantum mechanics, time, like matter, is not infinitely divisible. There are fundamental units of time, just as there are for charge, mass, space. There is no meaning to what happened before and what happened after within one Planck time, just as there is no meaning where exactly it is within one planck length. So there is no meaning to causality on the scale of planck time. So by this interpretation of quantum mechanics events happening on planck time scale is truly random (in a statistical sense), not menifestation of deeper mechanistic causality.

(April 11, 2014 at 7:19 pm)Chuck Wrote: It's not a hand wave. Event is a menifestation of change over time. According to quantum mechanics, time, like matter, is not infinitely divisible. There are fundamental units of time, just as there are for charge, mass, space. There is no meaning to what happened before and what happened after within one Planck time, just as there is no meaning where exactly it is within one planck length. So there is no meaning to causality on the scale of planck time. So by this interpretation of quantum mechanics events happening on planck time scale is truly random (in a statistical sense), not menifestation of deeper mechanistic causality.

Negative Chuck,

Nobody knows if time is quantized or not. The planck time distinguishes the smallest interval of time we can know anything about. This does not mean time intervals smaller than the planck time have no meaning. Further if it is ever shown that time is quantized it still does not follow that just because there is a smallest interval of time and there is a smallest unit of matter, that events become indistinguishable from matter.

Events are distinguishable from matter at any scale.

I never said time equals matter. I said the your implication that matter is conceptually different from events because it consist of fundamental indivisible parts where as events do not is invalid.

Time is an ordering of events, events is changes through time. If events happening within a Planck time of eachother can not in principle be ordered then in principle there can be no meaningful unit of time less than a Planck time. So Planck time is the fundamental unit of time for purpose of sequencing and causality. things happening at Planck time scale is causeless in the mechanistic sense.

Let us say time consist of chronons smaller than Planck time, or even infinite number of infinitely divisible components that adds up to Planck time, so what?
They can not be used to order events to finer than Planck length, so Planck length occurrences remain causeless.

So however they appear from one Planck time to the next is part of the fundamental property of the parts involved, and not an menifestation of deeper property. They are what they are. They are statistically predictable, but mechanistic ally unpredictable at certain scale, even in principle. Ie they are truly random and unknowable individually by nature.

(April 11, 2014 at 8:44 pm)Chuck Wrote: I never said time equals matter. I said the your implication that matter is conceptually different from events because it consist of fundamental indivisible parts where as events do not is invalid.

Time is an ordering of events, events is changes through time. If events happening within a Planck time of eachother can not in principle be ordered then in principle there can be no meaningful unit of time less than a Planck time. So Planck time is the fundamental unit of time for purpose of sequencing and causality. things happening at Planck time scale is causeless in the mechanistic sense.

Let us say time consist of chronons smaller than Planck time, or even infinite number of infinitely divisible components that adds up to Planck time, so what?
They can not be used to order events to finer than Planck length, so Planck length occurrences remain causeless.

So however they appear from one Planck time to the next is part of the fundamental property of the parts involved, and not an menifestation of deeper property. They are what they are. They are statistically predictable, but mechanistic ally unpredictable at certain scale, even in principle. Ie they are truly random and unknowable individually by nature.

Just because you cannot ascertain an order of events at time intervals smaller than the planck length doesn't mean an order is not existant.

It really sounds like you are saying that on the smallest of scales....causality doesn't exist. I don't believe that is an accepted scientific view.