Re: The Road with no Branches argument

From: Mike Oliver (mike_lists_at_verizon.net)
Date: 10/27/04 

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 11:48:22 -0500

Acme Diagnostics wrote:

> Well, weather is certainly complex. Butterflies causing
> hurricanes and all that. But complexity is not a measure of
> determinism.

No, it's not. But it is related to the capacity
to amplify microscopic indeterminism to an observable
scale. (Not that it's a terribly strict relationship
even there--photomultiplier tubes are pretty simple.)

> It seems to me that you have a naive view of
> randomness, but I don't really have enough information to judge
> that. In your references to QM, it also seems that you have a
> naive view of probability. You could reassure me (of course I
> mean "readers") that my guesses are incorrect. Perhaps you
> could give a more detailed example of why you think weather is
> indeterministic, and how your jump from the QM level of
> description to the air-mass level of description is
> necessarily indeterministic,

I wouldn't go so far as "necessarily", perhaps, but
it definitely appears to me that any other possibility
would involve rather artificial hypotheses (such as
a threshold of size below which differences are not
amplified). "Artificial" doesn't mean "can't be true",
of course -- do you have any reason you wish to present
why you think there *should* be such a threshold? Otherwise
it seems to me the natural working hypothesis is that
there is none.

It's not clear to me just what sort of naivete you're accusing
me of vis a vis probability -- would you care to elucidate
here? For what it's worth, yes, I think there's such a
thing as real randomness; if you call that naive, I take
it simply that you disagree.

> and how it would also remain so from
> the point-of-view of a creator or "The Great Scheme of Things."

If God wants to fool you, you're going to get fooled. Certainly
everything could have been scripted to merely *appear* random, when
it was actually written out like a novel. Do you believe that's
likely? Or perhaps more to the point, suppose it were true;
what good would it do you to know it?

> Suppose "The Great Scheme of Things" or "God," take your pick,
> created a game of chance. Would you call that indeterministic?

Not sure I follow, so maybe my paragraph above answers the question,
or maybe not. Presumably God could create a game of chance and
make it either deterministic or indeterministic, at his pleasure.
(In the first case it would be merely *apparently* a game of chance.)

> I have had an open question in several physics groups for one
> example of indeterminism. None has been forthcoming so far, and
> that is the only real basis I have for objecting to your opinion.
> If you have such an example, I would very much like to hear it.

I would be curious to hear detailed calculations on the subject,
as well. But it seems to me hard to doubt that the long-term
behavior of weather is indeterministic, given that the current
understanding of quantum indeterminacy is correct, and given that
there is no threshold of size below which weather effects are not
amplified.

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