: Well, it's not really a matter of whether you want to
: believe stuff's random or not. Bell's theorem
: indicates that it is. You could say it "sounds
: like giving up" to accept the law of momentum
: conservation instead of trying to build a reactionless
: drive, but the universe won't give you any points for
: doggedly forging on. :-)
That's not the only possible interpretation of Bell's theorem. It could be that information can travel faster than light or that first-order logic isn't capable of interpreting the bizarre behavior of electron spin, which is certainly a possibility.
Are you seriously comparing doubting whether everything's random to doubting conservation of momentum? I can't tell whether I should really respond to that or not.
: But if there's a way to predict it, then you can write
: down a list of numbers based on that prediction. Being
: able to write down a list of numbers which then turn
: out to be correct is the minimal requirement for
: determinism. If you can't do that, you can't determine
: the outcome in any way.
Minimal requirement. OK. I'll buy that.
: And, by the way, a list of numbers is a perfectly good
: scientific theory of dice-rolling. It's definite and
: it's verifiable; just look at every dice roll over
: eternity and see if they check out. Sure, it's not a
: very pretty theory, but it's still valid. And when
: you get right down to it, every theory that scientists
: construct is simply a set of instructions for how to
: figure out that list of numbers. The theory, in the
: form of words and equations, doesn't contain any more
: information than the same theory in the form of a
: number list; it's just a lot shorter and prettier.
It's more than a question of 'pretty'. It's not science if it's lucky. We're not asking for more than we deserve when we want to know not just what but why.
