: If information can travel faster than light, we can no
: longer predict the outcome of an event simply by
: looking at a slice of its past light cone, so a
: human-created determinist theory is impossible.
: There's no end to the influences which could affect a
: given event.
You're saying that if information can travel faster than light then determinism fails anyway. Maybe, maybe not. You'd have to add something more to the picture. What you've presented there isn't persuasive, because, again, simply our not being able to detect all the influences on something doesn't mean determinism fails. Stuff can be influenced at faster-than-light speed and still be deterministic.
The trick is you've switched from talking about the way the world is to the way we know about the world, This is a common sleight-of-hand in discussion of QM, or so I have found, as a curious non-expert.
[I've spent the last 24 hours or so puzzling over the idea of information traveling at v>c. It seems that our belief that nothing travels faster than light is based on the idea that as things travel faster they gain more mass, and the limit as v-->c has mass going to infinity. But while all information is represented physically, it's not fundamentally physical, is it? I think there's a distinction to be drawn between the information and any instantiation of it, although whether this helps any is unclear to me, since information traveling outside of an instantiation is difficult to imagine. But then again, we're at the edge of imagination here, and many of the properties ascribed to sub-atomic particles are similarly hard to imagine. This is a trade-off game, after all. Anything QM isn't going to fit nicely with our macro-level intuitions. I think the question is which micro-level choices percolate up and infect the macro-level most?]
: Non-first-order logics which deal more naturally with
: quantum phenomena do so by incorporating uncertainty
: into their structure. You can't say that a theory is
: determinist just because it employs a logic in which
: "maybe" is a definite answer. :-)
I agree wholeheartedly! That would definitely be cheating. What's funny to me is that this move you've suggested and excluded is precisely analogous to how I take the interpretation of QM you're pushing. We don't have to take 'maybe' as a definite answer, and I'm not prepared to do so yet.
But more to the point on logic--is it terribly surprising that logic might fail when presented with such bizarre properties as electron spin? Not at all, it seems to me. Logic is nothing more than a codification of our process of reasoning. It's a tool to help you identify what follows from what's taken for granted, based on agreed upon rules of transformation. Our tools of reasoning were clearly not developed in perception of properties like electron spin.
It could be that putting basic first-order logic to work on QM is just asking for trouble. It's taking a set of tools designed in one space to work in another. A paradox occurring is no great surprise.
At least not when you're weighing your options: Let's see, Bell's theorem forces me to conclude at least one of the following: a) information travels faster than light; b) first-order logic fails on properties like electron spin or c) the world's fundamentally indeterministic. I can't see that c) is the clear winner here. I'd say determinism is a more fundamental part of the web of belief (see below) than a) and b). There's a prima facie case, at least, which is all I'm trying to show--there are alternative interpretations of QM experimental results.
: Well, of course not everything is random. Conservation
: of momentum, energy, spin, etc. appear to be universal
: laws (though somewhat weakened by assorted uncertainty
: principles), and this constitutes determinism in
: itself. But many phenomena are effectively random. One
: may argue over whether they're "really"
: random or simply non-locally determinist...but either
: way, yes, the conservation of momentum and the
: impossibility of constructing a determinist theory of
: the universe are on approximately equal footing.
I have no problem on 'effectively' random. But the question of whether at bottom all is random is untouched by investigations of 'effectively' random. As I argued earlier, I doubt we have any decent proof of absolute randomness at all.
: All science is based on luck. There are an infinite
: number of theories which explain any given set of
: observations but differ on certain predictions not yet
: verifiable. To select between them, we pick the
: simplest and, yes, the prettiest, and hope that we're
: lucky enough to have picked the right one. Though so
: far, we've usually been wrong in that hope.
: As for why--science has nothing to say on that count, and
: never did. "Why do objects fall? Because of
: gravity, which is governed by the following
: equations..." That's merely restating the facts
: in a cleaner fashion. Making your description of the
: universe simpler and prettier. If you want to call
: that an explanation of why the universe acts the way
: it does, feel free...QM certainly doesn't pose a
: problem there.
I like a portion of what Archer has to say below in response to this comment. I disagree, however, that Ockham's Razor is a terribly effective method for getting at the truth. It seems to me more of a rule of thumb, a way to get through the wilderness, an agreement on how to play the 'science game.'
"We might as well try the simplest explanation first and then move up in complexity from there." If that's what you mean by Ockham's Razor, fine. If you think that the simplest explanation carries more of the weight of truth with it, I'd disagree, if for no other reason than what counts as simplest is a human convention.
I also certainly agree with the position that the same phenomena can be described by an infinite, or at least indefinitely large, number of expressions. This doesn't mean that each one is as good as the next.
More thoroughly, take Quine's idea of the web of belief. Our scientific theories and ideas can be imagined as scattered out on a table, with lines showing dependance drawn from idea to idea. Each and every scientific principle can be overthrown, but some are connected to more beliefs than others, and so some are more valuable, more destructive if they are removed. Some beliefs are more easily disposed of than others.
Now, you can't go changing languages each time you move from belief to belief, so the more fundamental ideas begin to constrain sorts of ways you talk about the dependent ideas. This rules out a great number of 'alternative formulations'. Or rather, they become intellectual exercises, but not a full-fledged member of the web of belief. Next, many of the alternative formulations will turn out to be simple translations that reduce to the agreed upon way of describing the event. With the competitors that remain, it's possible to choose a 'best', 'most explanatory', or perhaps, at this stage, 'prettiest' theory to run with.
Here's part of the problem: proof and truth are epistemic properties, while explanation is a psychological one. If something's proven to be true, it's true all around. There's no 'true for me, not true for you'. On the other hand, what counts as an explanation for one person very often does not for the next. Science is not just in the business of proving truths, but of explaning. And it counts against a scientific theory if, despite getting the details right and being simple and pretty, it doesn't gibe with any other theories in any other way, and we don't understand WHY it should be that way. Conversely, it adds support to scientific theories when they are reduced to more fundamental theories--if chemical properties are discovered to be based on physical properties; if multiple forces are found to be versions of a single force; if strange phenomena are found to fit in with the web of belief instead of requiring a revamped web.
If science were merely a game of truth-discovery, then your 'write down a bunch of numbers' theory would be fine. But science is in fact more than that. Better--the fact that people would never rely on such a theory is evidence that people expect more from a scientific theory! [And if the 'write it down' theory worked, mirabile dictu, I submit that anyone relying on it would suppose something-I-know-not-what behind the scenes guaranteeing its success, if they bothered to consider it at all, which I take it I'm allowed to suppose. If we allowed for the possibility of 'recurring, dependable miracles', then I think laws of nature are right out!]
***
NOW, as to where this all fits in, as at least one person is wondering, I'm merely looking to establish that results of QM experiments are one thing and interpretation another. This all started when Archer resisted some of the common conclusions of QM and SiliconDream pushed them.
Accepting that the world is fundamentally indeterministic is not a forced move from accepting the results of QM experiments, I say.
