Logic of chance

[lukec]

I haven't learned that much about it, I'll be honest, but Skinner's no-free-will idea is a very interesting one to me and when we skimmed through it in Psych it all seemed rather plausible... If, at some level, all behavior is reactionary, how much of what we do is truly willed by us? How much of what we do is determined merely by our environment (including but not limited to the parenting style with which we are raised, the friends we have, random events)?

[DD_8630]

I haven't learned that much about it, I'll be honest, but Skinner's no-free-will idea is a very interesting one to me and when we skimmed through it in Psych it all seemed rather plausible... If, at some level, all behavior is reactionary, how much of what we do is truly willed by us? How much of what we do is determined merely by our environment (including but not limited to the parenting style with which we are raised, the friends we have, random events)?

Does it matter? We may as well assume that we have free will because, if we're wrong, it won't matter.

[lukec]

Doesn't matter pragmatically, but I'm sure some people would argue that it matters a lot. Now, I actually agree- even if we don't have free will, it sure seems like we do, but it's an interesting point nonetheless.

[josef rosenkranz]

[

quote='DD_8630
You misunderstand: Hawking himself stated that he believed the bet lost. He now believes that information is radiated in a garbled form, and I agree with him.

On the contrary, it is: even the 'many-worlds' hypothesis is a controversial interpretation of quantum mechanics. The consensus among scientists is that there is probably only one universe (ours), and that there certainly is no evidence thus far of alternate ones.

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.
Controversy between who? street trash bin cleaners? taxi drivers?
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.

Further you mention the consensus among scientists.
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.

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.

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.
The Occam's razor principle ( who was he anyway?)brings us down from the high Olympus of philosophy to the practical world surrounding us.Dawkins mentions also in his book TGD the principle of economy in connection with evolution of life.
So what I am taking about is that most ,if not all of physical events in our ordinary world can be seen as a dual phenomenon of predictability and chance ,or causal and randomness,(there are a lot of parallel names) which can be defined with this general expression of determinism and indeterminism.

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.

[/quote]


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?
Sure economy is partially chaotic,say indeterministic, with the accent of the word partiallybecause it is in the same time governed by laws ,say determinisic ones.

Weather forecast is a stringent exemple of the same duality.
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.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.


[quote]Determinism, then, is the philosophical position that the universe is (in principle) predictable: given enough information about the present, one can predict the future with 100% accuracy.
Indeterminism is the position that the universe cannot be so modelled.

Quantum mechanically, the universe is indeterminate: there are truly random events in the universe that cannot be predicted, so neither can the universe at large be predicted. It can be approximated to certain degrees of accuracy, but it can never be predicted with 100% accuracy.


I hope that clears up the misconception you seem to have about determinism and indeterminism: first, they are mutually incompatible (both can't be true), and second, the universe is indeterminate (quantum mechanically speaking.).( unquote)

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 caused by case.!!!
4.All events can be caused by necessity or by chance.
5 Necessity and chance are alternatively aging 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.

[DD_8630]

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).

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.
Controversy between who? street trash bin cleaners? taxi drivers?

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).

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.

Further you mention the consensus among scientists.
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.

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.

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.

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.

What? Occam's Razor is a fantastically useful principle. When did I ever tell you that I don't agree with it?

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?

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.

Weather forecast is a stringent exemple of the same duality.
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.

Occam's Razor implies no such thing.

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.

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.

[josef rosenkranz]

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)

I'm sorry but what you maintain here I call it hair splitting.
I am not a scientist ,nor a philosopher but a M.Sc.graduate in electrical engineering and I look at the world in a practical matter and at scientific problems from a technical point of view based on a large experience in technical problems.
This is my approach also to atheism .
I consider that the ordinary world we are living in, is governed by laws of nature ,devoid of any supernatural influence but in the same time characterized ,each of them (may be that there are also exceptions)by a dual form of order ond disorder.
Disorder is by no means an act of a supernatural force but a result of cause/effect event,only that the effect might be of the type of the uncertainity principle or a result of a not definable great number of causes which according to the Occam's razor principle tansform it in a de facto disorder.
You can consider what I'm saying as not exactly philosophically correct.
May be that the postulation is flawed by some inexact expressions,I don't care.
The essence of it is proved by life no matter in which direction you are looking ,it is in classical physics ,in economy ,in sciology,in biology ,in medecine and so on.

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.

With all due respect you have forgotten what you have said about my quotation from Hawking's book on the Occam's razor principle in the thread "determinism vs.indeterminism."
Negativism in one debate may be interesting but a stubborn negativism lowers the level of the debate to futile contradictions.
The Latins said "erare humanum est,perseverare diabolicum" which means that error is humanly but stubborness diabolic.
Please pay attention that what I'm saying here has nothing personal but only general thoughts about the subject,and this as opposite to your method of trying to degrade my ideas by different names.

[DD_8630]

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)

I'm sorry but what you maintain here I call it hair splitting.
I am not a scientist ,nor a philosopher but a M.Sc.graduate in electrical engineering and I look at the world in a practical matter and at scientific problems from a technical point of view based on a large experience in technical problems.

Then that is your problem: the world is not as nice and intuitive as electronics would have it.

If you are neither a scientist nor a philosopher, why do you insist on going against the entire community of scientists and philosophers? I, for one, know when to defer to their expertise.

This is my approach also to atheism .
I consider that the ordinary world we are living in, is governed by laws of nature ,devoid of any supernatural influence but in the same time characterized ,each of them (may be that there are also exceptions)by a dual form of order ond disorder.
Disorder is by no means an act of a supernatural force but a result of cause/effect event,only that the effect might be of the type of the uncertainity principle or a result of a not definable great number of causes which according to the Occam's razor principle tansform it in a de facto disorder.
You can consider what I'm saying as not exactly philosophically correct.
May be that the postulation is flawed by some inexact expressions,I don't care.

To say the least. And this brings me back to my first point: you have come into this debate not knowing the correct terminology, conflating your own intuitive guesses at the terms with their actual definition. You talk of chaos, indeterminism, unpredictability, and disorder, as if they are exactly the same thing. Suffice to say, they are not.

So that's why we disagree: our terminology is not the same. What you mean by 'indeterminate' is not what I (nor philosophers, nor my fellow scientists) mean by 'indeterminate'.

[josef rosenkranz]

Then that is your problem: the world is not as nice and intuitive as electronics would have it.

If you are neither a scientist nor a philosopher, why do you insist on going against the entire community of scientists and philosophers? I, for one, know when to defer to their expertise.

I did speak about my ability ,as an engineer,to look at the world from a technical point of view which is not just electronics as you imply.
The problem we are debating here is unanimously recognized as a controversial one, so I do not understand in the name of whom you assume the role as a representative of "the entire community of scientists and philosophers"?
Come on. Isn't it a little bit exagerated?

You can consider what I'm saying as not exactly philosophically correct.
May be that the postulation is flawed by some inexact expressions,I don't care.

To say the least. And this brings me back to my first point: you have come into this debate not knowing the correct terminology, conflating your own intuitive guesses at the terms with their actual definition. You talk of chaos, indeterminism, unpredictability, and disorder, as if they are exactly the same thing. Suffice to say, they are not

So that's why we disagree: our terminology is not the same. What you mean by 'indeterminate' is not what I (nor philosophers, nor my fellow scientists) mean by 'indeterminate'.

We really disagree about terminology but you did not disprove the essential point of my view that most of laws of nature are governed by both random and determinism each of them acting in certain limits.
Now, you looked a little haughty on quotations of terminology which I coppied from the Wikipwedia so I went seeking for help to the more "noble" Britannica.
Here is what I found:
(quote)
1) Main Entry: in·de·ter·mi·nate
Pronunciation: \ˌin-di-ˈtərm-nət, -ˈtər-mə-\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English indeterminat, from Late Latin indeterminatus, from Latin in- + determinatus, past participle of determinare to determine
Date: 14th century
1 a: not definitely or precisely determined or fixed : vague b: not known in advance c: not leading to a definite end or result
2: having an infinite number of solutions <a system of indeterminate equations>
3: being one of the seven undefined mathematical expressions
4: characterized by sequential flowering from the lateral or basal buds to the central or uppermost buds ; also : characterized by growth in which the main stem continues to elongate indefinitely without being limited by a terminal inflorescence — compare 4 (unquote)

So what we see here is that "indeterminate" is a notion not forcible connected to quantum theory or to the universe but also to the ordinary technical world. The points 2 and 3 underline just what I have intuitively said that when you perform a measurement based on a law of physics,and you are for instance increasing the accuracy of the measurement you'll get to a point where you have an infinite number of results depending upon a system of indefinite equations, meaning that you have entered the indeterminate part of this law.
This will not be a problem of aproximation but a problem of practical randomness.

One cannot deny the fact that the indefinite temperature of physical objects is a subproduct of the second law of thermodynamics.
So each law where temperature is a part of it is intrinsically indetereminated.That's just a typical problem (one of many others) of weather forecasting.
The same aplies to the most basic law of Ohm as I have mentioned in a previous reply.

Another interesting definition of the Britannica is that of "Chaos":
(quote)
chaos theory
mathematics and mechanics
Main
in mechanics and mathematics, the study of apparently random or unpredictable behaviour in systems governed by deterministic laws. A more accurate term, “deterministic chaos,” suggests a paradox because it connects two notions that are familiar and commonly regarded as incompatible. The first is that of randomness or unpredictability, as in the trajectory of a molecule in a gas or in the voting choice of a particular individual from out of a population. In conventional analyses, randomness was considered more apparent than real, arising from ignorance of the many causes at work. In other words, it was commonly believed that the world is unpredictable because it is complicated. The second notion is that of deterministic motion, as that of a pendulum or a planet, which has been accepted since the time of Isaac Newton as exemplifying the success of science in rendering predictable that which is initially complex.(unquote).

Voila, the "deterministic chaos" connects two apparently incompatible notions :random and determinism.
So it is no more a terminology expressed by me on the base of an engineering technical intuition but one collected from the high Britannica.
It is true that science does not begin from encyclopaedies,but the opposite is also true that a notion published in an encyclopaedy is a common denominator for a theory sustained by group of skilled persons in this field.
I invite members of our forum to enhance the knowledge of this apparently odd notion called "deterministic chaos" with examples fom different fields as economy ,sociology,biology,health and so on.

[DD_8630]

The problem we are debating here is unanimously recognized as a controversial one, so I do not understand in the name of whom you assume the role as a representative of "the entire community of scientists and philosophers"?

There is no 'role representative', insofar as every member of the community says the same thing.

We really disagree about terminology but you did not disprove the essential point of my view that most of laws of nature are governed by both random and determinism each of them acting in certain limits.
Now, you looked a little haughty on quotations of terminology which I coppied from the Wikipwedia so I went seeking for help to the more "noble" Britannica.
Here is what I found:

1) Main Entry: in·de·ter·mi·nate
Pronunciation: \ˌin-di-ˈtərm-nət, -ˈtər-mə-\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English indeterminat, from Late Latin indeterminatus, from Latin in- + determinatus, past participle of determinare to determine
Date: 14th century
1 a: not definitely or precisely determined or fixed : vague b: not known in advance c: not leading to a definite end or result
2: having an infinite number of solutions <a system of indeterminate equations>
3: being one of the seven undefined mathematical expressions
4: characterized by sequential flowering from the lateral or basal buds to the central or uppermost buds ; also : characterized by growth in which the main stem continues to elongate indefinitely without being limited by a terminal inflorescence — compare 4

So what we see here is that "indeterminate" is a notion not forcible connected to quantum theory or to the universe but also to the ordinary technical world.

On the contrary, in the context of this discussion, the quantum mechanical definition is the pertinent one. I fully understand that words have multiple definitions, but only one definition applies at any one time (save for innuendo or double entendre).

The points 2 and 3 underline just what I have intuitively said that when you perform a measurement based on a law of physics,and you are for instance increasing the accuracy of the measurement you'll get to a point where you have an infinite number of results depending upon a system of indefinite equations, meaning that you have entered the indeterminate part of this law.
This will not be a problem of aproximation but a problem of practical randomness.

Again, you are talking about something entirely different than me. We are discussing whether the universe is actually determinable (i.e., capable of prediction with unlimited accuracy), rather than just experimentally measurable.

One cannot deny the fact that the indefinite temperature of physical objects is a subproduct of the second law of thermodynamics.
So each law where temperature is a part of it is intrinsically indetereminated.That's just a typical problem (one of many others) of weather forecasting.
The same aplies to the most basic law of Ohm as I have mentioned in a previous reply.

Again, you are conflating various definitions of 'indeterminate' (in this case, those of philosophy and chaos theory).

Another interesting definition of the Britannica is that of "Chaos":

chaos theory
mathematics and mechanics
Main
in mechanics and mathematics, the study of apparently random or unpredictable behaviour in systems governed by deterministic laws. A more accurate term, “deterministic chaos,” suggests a paradox because it connects two notions that are familiar and commonly regarded as incompatible. The first is that of randomness or unpredictability, as in the trajectory of a molecule in a gas or in the voting choice of a particular individual from out of a population. In conventional analyses, randomness was considered more apparent than real, arising from ignorance of the many causes at work. In other words, it was commonly believed that the world is unpredictable because it is complicated. The second notion is that of deterministic motion, as that of a pendulum or a planet, which has been accepted since the time of Isaac Newton as exemplifying the success of science in rendering predictable that which is initially complex.

Voila, the "deterministic chaos" connects two apparently incompatible notions :random and determinism.
So it is no more a terminology expressed by me on the base of an engineering technical intuition but one collected from the high Britannica.

Again, you are conflating two definitions. That does not an argument make.

[josef rosenkranz]

Voila, the "deterministic chaos" connects two apparently incompatible notions :random and determinism.
So it is no more a terminology expressed by me on the base of an engineering technical intuition but one collected from the high Britannica.[/quote]
Again, you are conflating two definitions. That does not an argument make.
[/quote]

DD O.K.
We where both left alone in the arena fighting as gladiators while the atheist public wathched from the benches above and while the emperor Hadrianus run away to the States.
It was my pleasure to oppose you as I guess that ,by your own words, you are a scientist or/and a philosopher.
I was honoured to find myself opposing an "entire community of scientist and philosophers"-more than in my sweetest dreams.
The topic has apparently run out of fuel.May be we wiil find another one
as interesting as this one.