Photons and determinism, part 2

[bennyboy]

To the OP.

"The answer must be no. No time has passed for that photon in its long journey, so it was always going to arrive at my eye, and no matter what happens in its journey, this is written in stone."

Something heading toward you and hitting you does not prove it was determined. You have to show that all cases with the same starting conditions will produce the same effect. We know this is not the case because some of the photons hit other stuff alone the way.

The hitting the eye isn't the proof. It is the lack of the passage of time which means we must mold our understanding of the universe primarily around light.

[IATIA]

The hitting the eye isn't the proof. It is the lack of the passage of time which means we must mold our understanding of the universe primarily around light.

Basically, we do. Think of light as the 'numeral one' of QM. Everything in mathematics is based on numeral one. Yet the numeral one is mostly useless on it's own. Complex operations with one, basically yield one.

[Surgenator]

"The answer must be no. No time has passed for that photon in its long journey, so it was always going to arrive at my eye, and no matter what happens in its journey, this is written in stone."

Something heading toward you and hitting you does not prove it was determined. You have to show that all cases with the same starting conditions will produce the same effect. We know this is not the case because some of the photons hit other stuff alone the way.

The hitting the eye isn't the proof. It is the lack of the passage of time which means we must mold our understanding of the universe primarily around light.

If you have 100 photons ,released in 0.1 second intervals, from the moon, all heading toward the same eye on earth (takes about 1.2 seconds), how many will actually hit the eye? According to your logic, all 100 of them. We know this is not the case because some of the photons will hit the air molecules in the atmosphere. The flaw in your logic is in the application of a tautological statement. Your taking the tautological statement, 'the photon that hit my eye had no choice but to hit my eye', and then applying it to the photons that didn't hit your eye.

Determinism requires that the same initial conditions leads to the same results. You have not demonstrated that another photon must hit your eye just because a previous one did.

[bennyboy]

If you have 100 photons ,released in 0.1 second intervals, from the moon, all heading toward the same eye on earth (takes about 1.2 seconds), how many will actually hit the eye? According to your logic, all 100 of them.

I've said nothing like this, and I didn't realize that your misunderstanding of my idea was so deep. I think there is a total disconnect between what you think I'm saying and what I'm actually saying.

I'm saying that since a photon is timeless, it is not subject to causal influences, and that wherever it happens to land, that's where it was always going to land, right from the start. Therefore, even if QM events can lead to a butterfly effect (for example), the apparently random or unpredictable states cannot be non-deterministic.

Determinism requires that the same initial conditions leads to the same results.

No. Determinism requires that one initial condition can only lead to one result.

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The hitting the eye isn't the proof. It is the lack of the passage of time which means we must mold our understanding of the universe primarily around light.

Basically, we do. Think of light as the 'numeral one' of QM. Everything in mathematics is based on numeral one. Yet the numeral one is mostly useless on it's own. Complex operations with one, basically yield one.

Right. And I'm extending that scientific reality into a philosophical argument: "c" therefore determinism.

[IATIA]

I'm saying that since a photon is timeless, it is not subject to causal influences, and that wherever it happens to land, that's where it was always going to land, right from the start.

You are speaking as though the photon has a mind of it's own. Being timeless, from it's perspective, it has never existed and therefore, cannot influence causality. The photon is a 'bullet'. Any 'causality' would be initiated from the QM process that generated the photon.

[Surgenator]

If you have 100 photons ,released in 0.1 second intervals, from the moon, all heading toward the same eye on earth (takes about 1.2 seconds), how many will actually hit the eye? According to your logic, all 100 of them.

I've said nothing like this, and I didn't realize that your misunderstanding of my idea was so deep. I think there is a total disconnect between what you think I'm saying and what I'm actually saying.

I'm saying that since a photon is timeless, it is not subject to causal influences, and that wherever it happens to land, that's where it was always going to land, right from the start. Therefore, even if QM events can lead to a butterfly effect (for example), the apparently random or unpredictable states cannot be non-deterministic.

First off, "not subject to causal influences" is violation of the other postulate of relativity, i.e. the physics laws remain the same independent of the inertial reference frame.

Second, you're giving more weight to the photon's reference frame than any other one. If you want relativity to apply, the reference frame should NOT matter. The fact that I can create a casual influence in my frame, means that a casual influence has to exist in the photon reference frame.

Determinism requires that the same initial conditions leads to the same results.

No. Determinism requires that one initial condition can only lead to one result.

Repeating the experiment should not change the results. So the same initial conditions lead to the same results in a deterministic system.

[bennyboy]

First off, "not subject to causal influences" is violation of the other postulate of relativity, i.e. the physics laws remain the same independent of the inertial reference frame.

Second, you're giving more weight to the photon's reference frame than any other one. If you want relativity to apply, the reference frame should NOT matter. The fact that I can create a casual influence in my frame, means that a casual influence has to exist in the photon reference frame.

?
In our reference frame, the photon ALSO hits my eye. The difference is that the photon's timelessness means that it could not have been otherwise.

No. Determinism requires that one initial condition can only lead to one result.

Repeating the experiment should not change the results. So the same initial conditions lead to the same results in a deterministic system.

Okay. Go ahead and place all the objects in the universe in the same positions, and arrange for a photon to leave a sun 1,000 light years away, and make sure that the exact same emitting body is pointed at the exact same eye. I eagerly await your results.

[Surgenator]

First off, "not subject to causal influences" is violation of the other postulate of relativity, i.e. the physics laws remain the same independent of the inertial reference frame.

Second, you're giving more weight to the photon's reference frame than any other one. If you want relativity to apply, the reference frame should NOT matter. The fact that I can create a casual influence in my frame, means that a casual influence has to exist in the photon reference frame.

?
In our reference frame, the photon ALSO hits my eye. The difference is that the photon's timelessness means that it could not have been otherwise.

Not if I don't want it to. If I know when the photon will arrive at your eye, I can block it before it gets there. If the photon has left it source (in my frame), it cannot change its course. Therefore I decide if it hits or not.

Repeating the experiment should not change the results. So the same initial conditions lead to the same results in a deterministic system.

Okay. Go ahead and place all the objects in the universe in the same positions, and arrange for a photon to leave a sun 1,000 light years away, and make sure that the exact same emitting body is pointed at the exact same eye. I eagerly await your results.

If I were to set all of the universe to a previous state, quantum mechanics states that it is NOT a guarantee the photon will hit your eye. The probability distribution will still be the same, but the observation (the photon hitting your eye) may not be. The photon might hit another particle along the way that it didn't hit the previous time. That is how QM works.

[Pizza]

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?
In our reference frame, the photon ALSO hits my eye. The difference is that the photon's timelessness means that it could not have been otherwise.

Not if I don't want it to. If I know when the photon will arrive at your eye, I can block it before it gets there. If the photon has left it source (in my frame), it cannot change its course. Therefore I decide if it hits or not.

Okay. Go ahead and place all the objects in the universe in the same positions, and arrange for a photon to leave a sun 1,000 light years away, and make sure that the exact same emitting body is pointed at the exact same eye. I eagerly await your results.

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If I were to set all of the universe to a previous state, quantum mechanics states that it is NOT a guarantee the photon will hit your eye. The probability distribution will still be the same, but the observation (the photon hitting your eye) may not be. The photon might hit another particle along the way that it didn't hit the previous time. That is how QM works.

Doesn't that undermine determinism?

[bennyboy]

Not if I don't want it to. If I know when the photon will arrive at your eye, I can block it before it gets there.

Right. And it was ALWAYS going to hit there, from the time it started its journey a thousand years ago. You just didn't know it yet.

If I were to set all of the universe to a previous state, quantum mechanics states that it is NOT a guarantee the photon will hit your eye. The probability distribution will still be the same, but the observation (the photon hitting your eye) may not be. The photon might hit another particle along the way that it didn't hit the previous time. That is how QM works.

The timelessness of the photon introduces a simultaneity. In at least one frame, that photon's emitter and your eye are brought into relation with each other, and there is no time in which causality can disrupt this. That means with regard to the motion in our timeline, our "observation" (which doesn't exist AFAIK) of the photon is a kind of illusory artifact, as is any interaction we think we've had.

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Not if I don't want it to. If I know when the photon will arrive at your eye, I can block it before it gets there. If the photon has left it source (in my frame), it cannot change its course. Therefore I decide if it hits or not.

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If I were to set all of the universe to a previous state, quantum mechanics states that it is NOT a guarantee the photon will hit your eye. The probability distribution will still be the same, but the observation (the photon hitting your eye) may not be. The photon might hit another particle along the way that it didn't hit the previous time. That is how QM works.

Doesn't that undermine determinism?

He's TRYING to undermine it.