Re: Surviving Einstein.

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Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2003 04:20:01 +0000 (UTC)

John E. Hadstate <nospam@null.nil> wrote:

>"Martin Green" <marty@aptitude-testing.com> wrote in message
>news:484b4cb9.0306300731.2b5c4ec1@posting.google.com...
>> > John E. Hadstate wrote:
>> > > Hidden variables have been ruled out by whom? By people who can't
>figure
>> > > out what the hidden variables might be? That is circular reasoning.
>>
>> Douglas Gwyn replied:
>>
>> > Not at all...(snip)...The easiest way to see that is to
>> > consider the famous two-slit experiment, wherein providing
>> > additional paths to the goal actually reduces the chance
>> > of certain formerly likely outcomes to zero. That simply
>> > contradicts classical probability theory.
>>
>> But it doesn't contradict classical wave theory.
>>
>> It's only when you assume that light is made of particles
>> that you have a problem with determinism in the two-slit
>> experiment. The problem goes away if you treat light as
>> a wave.
>>

>I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that no one who's really thought
>about what's going on there actually considers photons (or electrons) to be
>either particles or waves. Given the ample amount of evidence supporting
>both models, and given that in classical terms the models are mutually
>exclusive, it is clear that neither classical model alone reflects reality
>beyond a superficial level (any more than Bohr's atom reflects reality.)

Actually, electrons (and photons) are electrons and photons. Names
such as "wave" and "particle" are human inventions not necessarily
related to electrons and photons in any simple way.

Experiments show that if you do an experiment that measures
a particle-like property of an electron or photon, you get
a value for that particle-like property.

On the other hand, if you do an experiment that measures a
wave-like property of an electron or photon, you get a value
for that wave-like property.

Neither result means that an electron or photon *is* a wave
or a particle.

>The argument is over whether the apparently random behavior reflects some
>fundamental property of the universe (call it "non-determinism"), or whether
>it reflects our current inability to explain the observed behavior in terms
>that are fundamentally deterministic.

I think that Doug Gwynn's comments on hidden variables are
important here. Quantum mechanical behavior seems to be
non-deterministic.

>The debate is more like, "Is the Universe like some giant clock that ticks
>away according to laws that we just don't understand or are the basic laws
>governing the universe fundamentally unknowable?"

There are other possibilities as well. What if the "basic laws"
of the universe involve randomness. We can know about randomness.

Don't forget, randomness does not imply structureless or orderless.
Randomness has properties too. Imagine if you will drawing
truly random numbers from a Gaussian distribution. While individual
numbers will be unpredictable, the aggregate of them will have
a mean and a standard deviation that we can calculate. And those
values fluctuate less and less the more random numbers we draw.

The numbers will also have a distribution that will converge
to the Gaussian distribution.

We can make no prediction about an individual number, but we
can know much about their aggregate properties.

    ---- Paul J. Gans

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