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Everything after time T is determined

Everything after time T is determined

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rousseau

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Feel free to get into the grit of this debate, or instead read the extensive number of threads we've already made by going into advanced search, and searching on free will by thread title.

Why I'm actually making this thread isn't to debate, it's to create a poll on this statement:

'Everything after time T is determined'
 
rousseau said:
Feel free to get into the grit of this debate, or instead read the extensive number of threads we've already made by going into advanced search, and searching on free will by thread title.

Why I'm actually making this thread isn't to debate, it's to create a poll on this statement:

'Everything after time T is determined'
Click to expand...

Did you freely start the thred by complete uninfluenced choice or was it fated?
 
I voted 'unclear' - I guess it depends on which interpretation of Quantum is true. The World does appear to be deterministic.
 
I voted "other".

I would have preferred to be able to vote "I don't know"...

Or, even more pointedly, "I don't know and I don't believe anyone does".

Or even better : "I don't know and I don't believe anyone does but I'm sure a lot of fools will believe they do!"
EB
 
I vote no. Scientists seem to be largely agreed that uncaused things happen. I have no reason to try to overrule science.
 
No. Quantum mechanics ensures that somethings will always be undetermined. I just wonder what might be the long term macro consequences of such indeterminacy.

SLD
 
SLD said:
Quantum mechanics ensures that...
Click to expand...

On a topic this difficult for mere humans to perceive and are likely to be extraordinarily ignorant about, I do think that statements like reach a bit too far. A much more modest statement would be "At our present time, our understanding suggests that..."

In the poll I voted for hard determinism, largely because that would be synchronous with the trend throughout history. We find things that we cannot find explanations for at the present time (and then some attribute there being no cause at all or a supernatural cause), when really the cause/effect relationship was present but we were just ignorant of it at the time. After advances in technology and gathering of more scientific data we may be able to better identify the causes for the phenomenon we witness.
 
To say of an event that it was determined is merely to point out that there was a cause for the event’s occurrence. Such determinism doesn’t suggest a global wide and eternal clockwork-like universe—even if people were privy to and could compute the trajectory of every objects movement. If Andy sets off an improvised explosive device and the hair clip Betty wore today flies out and blinds Chad, the explosive event was not a necessary event precisely because the choice to wear the clip could have been different.

Oh, and time of zero starting at the Big Bang seems like a bunch of scientific misinterpretation of the facts. My idea of time is that it doesn’t fluctuate but instead marches on in perfect rhythm. It leaves room for asking how much time elapsed between the Big Bang and the previous one we might learn about later if the hypothesis is correct that our universe undergoes a series of cosmic bangs, expansions, and crunches that bangs yet again.

As to the idea of uncaused, that comes across as having a nonclementure defect. To me, cause and effect is like an unbreakable semantic union. It would be like discussing what an atheist is while some adhere to definitions used for centuries old while others embrace and latch onto one’s more self-suited.

I guess i’ll go with “yes.”
 
fast said:
As to the idea of uncaused, that comes across as having a nonclementure defect. To me, cause and effect is like an unbreakable semantic union.
Click to expand...

Cause and effect do go together. To say something is uncaused is to say it isn't an effect.
 
I believe that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle implies that uncertainty is more than a problem of measurement, but is in fact a characteristic of the Universe. Thus, while statistically things might seem to be predictable at a certain scale, they are not at all scales. How and if uncertainty at a quantum scale effects things at a macro scale is as yet unknown.
 
In practice there is no such thing as exact measurements. There is always noise. A majority of the time the noise can be ignored or reduced such that it is not a problem.

The UP is a little different. For two conjugate variables you can not simultaneously increase certainty of both in the same experiment. It is an experimental impossibility.

The ST transporter requires simultaneous precision of variables of each particle. They had a 'Heisenberg Compensator'.

From a QM view you can look at the moon as the average of probabilistic states of each particle. One gas particle bouncing around in a tank is QM. A large number of gas particles in a tank is Newtonian mechanics. Newtonian pressure.

We can not predict exactly when a particle is emitted from radioactive material. When can experimentally build a model that predicts the probability of a particle. It does not mean causality is violated because we use probabilities.

The UP applies in different places. In an optical spectrum analyzer it sets the a limit on measuring the wavelength of a laser wavelength. Regardless of instrumentation noise wavelength can only be determined as a probability..
 
Even if there is baked-in, inherent uncertainty about events at certain scales, that doesn't close the door on absolute determinism within a multiverse. If the Everett interpretation is true, then each locally indeterminate event would branch into multiple parallel universes, and taking the whole picture from a hypothetical all-inclusive view you could still say that the multiverse is determined from start to finish, as all possible alternate scenarios are exhausted in some version of the future.
 
SLD said:
No. Quantum mechanics ensures that somethings will always be undetermined. I just wonder what might be the long term macro consequences of such indeterminacy.

SLD
Click to expand...

There are at least ten interpretations of Quantum, some are fully deterministic.
 
Deterministic has a philisophicqal amd mathematical mean.

Philosophical are events predetermined. Was the creation of the USA predetermined. Do I really have q choice or is predestined.

Mathematically deterministic means you plug values into function and get an answer. You know velocity and time, and from that you can deterministically derive distance.

The number of people in line at any moment a Starbucks is probabilistic or stochastic mot deterministic. A probalistic model will yield the odds of the line being so long at a given time of the day.
 
If the world is determined, a series of antecedents brought each and every person to that line at Starbucks at that point in time, but a superficial observer, just doing a headcount, not having access to that information, would call it probabilistic.
 
Start regressing. Somebody walks into Starbucks. Back to birth preceded by birth to the evolution of the solar system and in current cosmology the BB which does not define where he initial conditions came from.

A long chain of caustion staring with creation of partcles from the BB.

An ood thought. If we know the exact stae of every particles in the un9verse can we predict the following staes?

Can there be a wave function for the universe?

Rain is falling on a car roof. The process of rain from clouds is deterministic. When a drop hits a spot on the roof is not. If we could characterize every particle in the cloud, wind, temperature and so forth we could possibly predict the exact creation of a drop and its trajectory.

I'd say predetermination is impossible to answer. No way to experimentally know.

Is the outcomes of a causal event always deterministic even if we can not see it? I suppose that would be the question of hidden variables in QM. I do not see how that could be answered experimentally.
 
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