Josef, I fear you do not fully understand what we are talking about here. There is a subtle difference between 'hard to predict' and 'fundamentally unpredictable': we can't make accurate weather forecasts because it's too complex for us to completely model, not because it's inherently indeterminate (as opposed to quantum particles, which really are inherently indeterminate).
You may as well claim there is a chocolate teapot orbiting Mars. Technically possible, but so unimaginably improbable as to be ignorable.
But this has nothing to do with determinism in the philosophical sense.
With all due respect, you are like a child using an English-French dictionary to translate every individual word in a sentence. That you resort to an encyclopaedic array of definitions (from Wikipedia, no less), just demonstrates how little you know about the subject.
Have you ever heard of a disambiguation page? Wikipedia uses them to distinguish between the many definitions of a single word. "Set", for example, has a plethora of associated links.
Now, I have great respect for Wikipedia's scientific rigour. Unfortunately, you have grossly misunderstood the terms with which it describes indeterminism.
(January 30, 2009 at 5:55 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: So you still maintain that the many world hypothesis is science fiction but in the same time and with your own words you present the hypothesis as controversial.Controversial between the proponents and the opponents. Only an exceedingly small minority of physicists advocate the hypothesis, while the majority reject it as mere conjecture. It is controversial because, despite it's lack of support in the scientific community, it has become the hypothesis has the support of the public (or, at least, those who have heard of it).
Controversy between who? street trash bin cleaners? taxi drivers?
(January 30, 2009 at 5:55 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: The controversy goes on between scientists,so let's give them a litlle respect and let's not consider apriory their debate as science fiction.It is not a priori. I call it science-fiction for the same reason I call anti-gravity science-fiction: it isn't impossible, or even beyond our current understanding of physics; rather, it's beyond our technological prowess. Both anti-gravity and the many-world hypothesis are obscure flights of fancy. They have no evidence to support them.
You may as well claim there is a chocolate teapot orbiting Mars. Technically possible, but so unimaginably improbable as to be ignorable.
(January 30, 2009 at 5:55 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: Further you mention the consensus among scientists.Exactly: science isn't a democracy. The consensus doesn't fall on theories because they appeal to the masses, but rather because they are empirically verifiable and objectively superior to their counterparts. The consensus falls on quantum mechanics rather than classical mechanics because the former is objectively better than the latter.
Fortunately science is not a democracy, I would say quite contrary.
Would science have been a democracy we would have science by now still before Copernicus ,Galileo,Newton ,Einstein or Hawking,to mention only the most proeminent of not consensual scientists.
(January 30, 2009 at 5:55 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: I for my self have no sufficient knowledge in physics so as to take part in this controversy.The problem is interesting fom a general point of view on the world but has very little to do to with the ordinary world.What? Occam's Razor is a fantastically useful principle. When did I ever tell you that I don't agree with it?
I brought up the issue only in connection with Hawking whom I consider as one of our greatest scientist and what was interesting for me was that I found in his book " A brief history of time" an idea which fitted my opinion on the limits of determinism.
He writes "..we could still imagine that there is a set of laws that determines events completely for some supernatural being,who could observe the current state of the universe without disturbing it.Howewer ,such models of the universe are not of much interest to us ordinary mortals.It seems better to employ the principle of economy known as Occam's razor and cut out all the features of the theory that cannot be observed",
I know that you don't agree with this idea but there are a lot of persons who do.
(January 30, 2009 at 5:55 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote:No: 'chaotic' does not mean 'indeterminate'. It means 'highly sensitive to initial conditions'. A small change to an initial condition will change the outcome in vast and unexpected (though not, in principle, unpredicted) ways.Quote:meteorological forecasts are wrong not because the universe is fweather are chaotic systems: tiny variation in the initial conditions lead to completely different outcomes. A particular breeze being slightly faster
You are confusing approximation with indeterminism. Economic and than measured, or a particular market sector being infinitesimally more saturated than polls determine, will yield completely different results.
It boils down to information. The weatherman is wrong because his calculations were a) derived using simplifying approximations and assumptions, and b) given inaccurate information. If a completely general and un-approximated solution could be derived, and if it were given the complete set of relevant data, it would be able to predict the climate at any time in the future.
So economic is up to you a totaly chaotic system?
You surely have heard about Adam Smith John Mill Stuart,Karl Marx,Keynes,Milton Friedman,just to mention only a few of famous economists who have cast economy in well known laws.Where they all idiots?
(January 30, 2009 at 5:55 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: Weather forecast is a stringent exemple of the same duality.Occam's Razor implies no such thing.
I come back to the second principle of thermodynamics.
A byproduct to it is that the temperature of the athmosphere is fundamentally chaotic.The heat as we know is dispersed by radiation convection and conduction.The atmosphere is heated by the sun by radiation and from below from the earth and oceans by radiation convection and conduction.Applying the Occams razor principle we must admit that the temperature of the athmosphere is unpredicable.
(January 30, 2009 at 5:55 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: Now a sudden temprature rise is able some times to trigger a chain reaction not unlike the nuclear reaction.Thats why the wheather is by no means exactly predictable .Weatherforecast stations are equipped all over the world with powerfull computer al linked together with different communication system.That gives them the possibility to predict the wheather approximately but never exactly.This is because the weather is a chaotic system: we don't know absolutely everything about the weather now, so we can't make long-term forecasts with any certainty. This is the nature of chaos: if our measurements of current data are off by even the smallest degree, our forecasts go wildly wrong.
But this has nothing to do with determinism in the philosophical sense.
(January 30, 2009 at 5:55 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: So I misunderstand Indeterminism and mix it up with "approximation".
Let's have a look how Wikipedia defines indeterminism giving several exampes of it:
1.No event is necessarily caused at all.
2.Some events are not necessarily caused.!!!
3.Some events are partyally [sic] caused by case.!!!
4.All events can be caused by necessity or by chance.
5 Necessity and chance are alternatively aging [sic] in what happens.!!!!!
6.The preservation is due to necessity the new to chance.!!!
The points 2,4,5,6 speak all clearly of the duality of necessity and chance.
It all confirms what I try to explain but is confronted with stubborn rejection. I looked about what Wikipedia says on approximation and din't found any connection whatsoever with indeterminism or something close to it.So let's drop also this weak argument.
With all due respect, you are like a child using an English-French dictionary to translate every individual word in a sentence. That you resort to an encyclopaedic array of definitions (from Wikipedia, no less), just demonstrates how little you know about the subject.
Have you ever heard of a disambiguation page? Wikipedia uses them to distinguish between the many definitions of a single word. "Set", for example, has a plethora of associated links.
Now, I have great respect for Wikipedia's scientific rigour. Unfortunately, you have grossly misunderstood the terms with which it describes indeterminism.
"I am a scientist... when I find evidence that my theories are wrong, it is as exciting as if the evidence proved them right." - Stargate: SG1
A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, -- a mere heart of stone. - Charles Darwin
A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, -- a mere heart of stone. - Charles Darwin