On 11 Dec 2013, at 18:58, John Clark wrote:

On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 4:08 PM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>>>> Determinism is far from "well established".

>>> It's a basic assumption in almost every scientific theory.

>> In the most important theory in physics, Quantum Mechanics, no such assumption is made, and despite a century of trying no experiment has ever been performed that even hinted such a deterministic assumption should be added in.

> What? Everett = SWE. The wave evolves deterministically.

Yes the Schrodinger Wave Equation (SWE) is deterministic but that doesn't matter because it describes nothing observable in the universe.

In which theory?



To figure out if a electron will be at point X you've got to square the value of the SWE at point X , and then all you get is a probability not a certainty.

In Copenhangen. In Everett's theory, you get a self-duplication, similar to the comp one.



To make matters worse the SWE uses imaginary numbers so 2 very different complex numbers provided by Schrodinger can produce identical probabilities after squaring. If 2 different things can produce identical results then things are not deterministic,

?
It is the other way round. If two similar things can get different results, then things are not deterministic. You would not say that arithmetic is indeterminate because both 8-5 and 9-6 gives deterministically the same result.

Bruno



and if those results are probabilities not certainties then things are even less deterministic.

  John K Clark




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