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From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Misuse of "random" in free will discussions
Message-ID: <228@spar.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-May-85 10:24:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.228
Posted: Thu May  2 10:24:40 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 4-May-85 07:50:47 EDT
References: <4177@hlexa.UUCP>
Reply-To: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis)
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Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
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From Henry Friedman:

>In a nondeterministic version, behavior at any point is a probability
>distribution.  But saying that some actions are more probable than others
>is not at all the same as saying that the action is random.

    I have a few questions here. `Random' is used frequently in many texts
    on physics and philosophy of science describing quantum events,
    frequently in the same sentence with `probability'.  Could be I'm
    confused, but I will use them both anyway, since that's all I know.

    Example:

    (A) "Photoelectrons are emitted when a surface is illuminated by light 
        "only when its frequency is above a certain threshold.

    (B)	"The time and place at which an individual emission occurs is RANDOM.

    (C)	"The PROBABILITY that an emission will occur within a certain
	"region is directly proportional to the frequency of the light
	"employed.

    (A), (B), and (C) together obviously  describe the Photoelectric Effect,
    first interpreted by Einstein in 1905. Provided your language is able to
    describe this phenomenon, we have but a vexing though meaningless
    language discrepency.

>Also, whether deterministic or not, behavior is DETERMINATE, or fixed
>in spacetime (even though we can't predict it prior to its occurrence).

    I'd like to understand your definition of `determinate'.

    By determinate, do you mean that Laplace's omniscient Daemon could
    have fathered quantum progeny -- Schroedinger's Daemon? 

    If so, let her reflect on, say, (ouch!) that electron that just hit me.
    How would she sense what I assume now to be an expanding probability
    wave, later focussed entirely at a random point allowable somewhere
    within that wave, and perhaps later again as yet another probability
    wave?

    Surely not as `waves of probability' of the particle's position, since
    by our assumption, Schroedinger's Daemon REALLY KNOWS where the electron
    is.

    But can the Daemon really do without the wave, and see the electron
    one specific location?

    No! Because effects like diffractive interference patterns, tunneling, 
    etc., DEMAND a wave-like nature.

    OK, then she sees a globby electron smeared all over the place, like a
    wave.  
    
    But that won't work either -- sooner or later it must collapse,
    instantaneously, to a point, far in excess of the speed of light.
    Besides, that contradicts what you said about probability distribution.

    Which leaves me uncertain as to what you mean by `determinate'.

>There is the further possibility, in the nondeterministic model, that
>ALL probablilistic decision branches do occur--in different branches
>of the "many worlds" version of reality.

    OK, but then I'm the random one, since the forks that this me right
    here branched off into actually finished this ar