(December 7, 2014 at 5:12 pm)Heywood Wrote: Well if that is the case then every time an atom randomly decays a miracle has occurred because causality is violated.

Considering how many radioactive nucleus there are, miracles happen every second. So if anyone wants to get their hands on some miracles, buy some bananas (K-40) or pick up some dust (U=238 and Th-232), or breath in air (C-12). Nucleur power plants are miracles factories (and the religious claim god creates miracles). It's a shame that they store the most miraculous goo away from the public. Unlike the holy water in catholic churches, this holy goo will actually burn your face off.

Quote:Of course the science community doesn't believe its a miracle....they simply decided that at the quantum level, causality no longer applies. What is a violation of the natural law of causality every instant is now just how the world works.

"Simply decide" They have evidence that it behaves randomly. The randomaness has a distribution (exponential) but no matter what you tweek, you cannot predict when a specific nucleus will decay.

(December 7, 2014 at 6:17 pm)Heywood Wrote: Causality is a natural law and quantum randomness violates it.

Causality is not a natural law. We perceive it as such only.

(December 7, 2014 at 6:54 pm)Surgenator Wrote: "Simply decide" They have evidence that it behaves randomly. The randomaness has a distribution (exponential) but no matter what you tweek, you cannot predict when a specific nucleus will decay.

They have evidence for an effect which has no local cause. This is exactly what a miracle is....yet it is not considered a miracle. Instead it is considered just the way the world works.

Quote:I'm not convinced either. I am pointing out the problem with miracles.

The problem is not "miracles," dummy. There are none. The problem is shitheads who believe in miracles or which there are legions.

(December 7, 2014 at 7:03 pm)Heywood Wrote:

(December 7, 2014 at 6:54 pm)Surgenator Wrote: "Simply decide" They have evidence that it behaves randomly. The randomaness has a distribution (exponential) but no matter what you tweek, you cannot predict when a specific nucleus will decay.

They have evidence for an effect which has no local cause. This is exactly what a miracle is....yet it is not considered a miracle. Instead it is considered just the way the world works.

A miralce is an unusual or wonderful event that is believed to be caused by the power of God There is nothing unusual are worderful about a nucleur decay.

Your assumption that every effect needs a cause is wrong. The natural world doesn't work like that on small scales.

There are a lot of things that random. Electrons going to a lower energy state are random. Spin orientation of an atom is also random. Johnson noise is random. The small world is full of random behavior. When you go to larger the scale, the mean of these random behavior wins out. That is why it doesn't seem random on larger scales.

(December 7, 2014 at 7:38 pm)Surgenator Wrote: Your assumption that every effect needs a cause is wrong. The natural world doesn't work like that on small scales.

There are a lot of things that random. Electrons going to a lower energy state are random. Spin orientation of an atom is also random. Johnson noise is random. The small world is full of random behavior. When you go to larger the scale, the mean of these random behavior wins out. That is why it doesn't seem random on larger scales.

Your claim that at the smallest of scales some things are random is just an interpretation. Its an interpretation that had to jump through a lot of hoops to be coherent. First you had to abandon causality, Second you had to change the meaning of random. Until these observations came along, randomness had always been just a function of our ignorance. Sure a dice roll seemed random, but if we knew all the variables that went into a particular roll, then we can predict its outcome.

There is another coherent interpretation which doesn't abandon causality and doesn't change randomness from just being a function of ignorance. It is the idea that some things on the quantum level have non local causes. By non-local cause I am not necessarily saying God....although it could be. In the other thread we discussed simulation hypothesis. If our reality is a simulation then all the quantum randomness that you think just is....is actually determined by some non local random number generator. Quantum mechanics and Bell's theorem do not preclude the possibility of non local causes. Why should I? Why should you? Why should you abandon causality and completely change the notion of randomness when there is a coherent interpretation that maintains causality/randomness? Is the possibility that we can make observations which suggest an external reality so scary to you that you have to go through these contortions of abandoning causality and the idea that randomness is just a function of ignorance?

(December 7, 2014 at 10:36 pm)Heywood Wrote:

(December 7, 2014 at 7:38 pm)Surgenator Wrote: Your assumption that every effect needs a cause is wrong. The natural world doesn't work like that on small scales.

There are a lot of things that random. Electrons going to a lower energy state are random. Spin orientation of an atom is also random. Johnson noise is random. The small world is full of random behavior. When you go to larger the scale, the mean of these random behavior wins out. That is why it doesn't seem random on larger scales.

Your claim that at the smallest of scales some things are random is just an interpretation. Its an interpretation that had to jump through a lot of hoops to be coherent.

An interpretation that is backup with evidence.

Quote:First you had to abandon causality, Second you had to change the meaning of random. Until these observations came along, randomness had always been just a function of our ignorance. Sure a dice roll seemed random, but if we knew all the variables that went into a particular roll, then we can predict its outcome.

Projecting again. Scientist abandoned the aether theory, the absolute time and space, geocentrilism, conservation of mass, parity conservations, charge-parity conservation, etc... The scientist abondon these ideas because they had evidence that they're wrong. And in the quantum world, there is plenty of evidence that shows the inherent randomness built into our universe. Yet, you want to project your ignorance upon the scientist.

(December 7, 2014 at 10:36 pm)Heywood Wrote: There is another coherent interpretation which doesn't abandon causality and doesn't change randomness from just being a function of ignorance. It is the idea that some things on the quantum level have non local causes. By non-local cause I am not necessarily saying God....although it could be. In the other thread we discussed simulation hypothesis. If our reality is a simulation then all the quantum randomness that you think just is....is actually determined by some non local random number generator.

I have heard of the holographic theory of the universe. However, the proposed holographic universe will still have inherent randomness. So that doesn't support your claim that random processes don't exist.

Quote:Quantum mechanics and Bell's theorem do not preclude the possibility of non local causes. Why should I? Why should you? Why should you abandon causality and completely change the notion of randomness when there is a coherent interpretation that maintains causality/randomness? Is the possibility that we can make observations which suggest an external reality so scary to you that you have to go through these contortions of abandoning causality and the idea that randomness is just a function of ignorance?

So you think that non-local causes save you. Non-local operators only come up if two particles or more particles are entangled. You have to show how that is possible all nucleur decays to say non-local operators explain that. Otherwise, your talking out of your ass.

The thing is, claiming something is a miracle is an entirely religious trait. A sceptic atheist just says, "That's an interesting event, I don't know how or why that happened. Let's investigate to see what we can find out about it." Whereas the theist is most likely to declare simply, "Miracle!" thus randomly attributing causation and abandoning any sensible line of enquiry. There are no miracles. Until it has been established that there is an active God, it's a meaningless claim.

(December 8, 2014 at 12:01 am)Surgenator Wrote: So you think that non-local causes save you. Non-local operators only come up if two particles or more particles are entangled. You have to show how that is possible all nucleur decays to say non-local operators explain that. Otherwise, your talking out of your ass.

First, its only within your interpretation of quantum mechanics that causality is abandoned and the meaning of randomness is changed. This isn't a case of science abandoning causality because it has been shown to not to exist. This is a case of some scientists abandoning causality because it doesn't fit with a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics they arbitrarily choose to believe. Many worlds is a quantum mechanical interpretation that is completely deterministic because the wave function obeys a deterministic wave function at all times. Your claim that causality has been shown to be false....is well false.

Second, entanglement is a quality of particles in our reality and not necessarily variables which operate on our reality. Yes...there is a speed limit on how fast information can travel through a reality....in our case it is the speed of light. However the speed of light is not a restriction on how fast information can travel to a reality.

If you are in a simulated reality when an atom decays, that information will take a certain amount of time to reach you as it propagates through each spatial coordinate of that reality. That amount of time is governed by, amoung other things, the permittivity and permeability of the free space within the reality. However, sending information from a random number generator outside the reality into the reality telling an atom to decay is not governed by the permittivity and permeability of the free space within the simulated reality. The speed at which that information propagates can be and probably is much faster then our speed of light.

Non local variables are going to take on a lot of the properties of entangled particles....but they do not have to be entangled particles.

(December 8, 2014 at 9:38 pm)Heywood Wrote:

(December 8, 2014 at 12:01 am)Surgenator Wrote: So you think that non-local causes save you. Non-local operators only come up if two particles or more particles are entangled. You have to show how that is possible all nucleur decays to say non-local operators explain that. Otherwise, your talking out of your ass.

First, its only within your interpretation of quantum mechanics that causality is abandoned and the meaning of randomness is changed.

Where is your proof that the scientific definition of randomness has changed?

Quote:This isn't a case of science abandoning causality because it has been shown to not to exist. This is a case of some scientists abandoning causality because it doesn't fit with a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics they arbitrarily choose to believe.

Please read more carefully. I said there are plenty of examples of random processes at the quantum level. I didn't say that causality doesn't exist. There are events at the quantum level that have causes and there are also those that don't.

And I didn't arbitrary choose to believe QM. QM has evidence for random behavior. I'm unaware of QM interpretation that says there is no randomn events.

Quote:Many worlds is a quantum mechanical interpretation that is completely deterministic because the wave function obeys a deterministic wave function at all times. Your claim that causality has been shown to be false....is well false.

Your ignorance is showing. All QM interpretations of the wave function are deterministic, but the observables are not. The observables are probabilistic. The probability distribution is determined from the wave function. So the observable (like position) is randomly choosen from a deterministic probability distribution.

Quote:Second, entanglement is a quality of particles in our reality and not necessarily variables which operate on our reality. Yes...there is a speed limit on how fast information can travel through a reality....in our case it is the speed of light. However the speed of light is not a restriction on how fast information can travel to a reality.

I know what a non-local variable is.

Quote:If you are in a simulated reality when an atom decays, that information will take a certain amount of time to reach you as it propagates through each spatial coordinate of that reality. That amount of time is governed by, amoung other things, the permittivity and permeability of the free space within the reality. However, sending information from a random number generator outside the reality into the reality telling an atom to decay is not governed by the permittivity and permeability of the free space within the simulated reality. The speed at which that information propagates can be and probably is much faster then our speed of light.

You missed my point. What makes these non-local decay variables be consistent? Why can't we control them? We can have a nuclear particle first entangled to an environment we control. Then we can have the same nuclear particle travel far away from the our environment and check if it had any affect on the decay. Tada, we can test non-local variables affect on decays. The only known effect processes that affects nuclear decays is when the sun spits out a bunch of neutrinos at us. This change isn't too surpricing since you can affect the production/decay rates by bombarding them with neutrinos.

Quote:Non local variables are going to take on a lot of the properties of entangled particles....but they do not have to be entangled particles.

Entangled literally means that one affected the other. If there is no entanglement, you cannot have causility.