Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!dlogics!dsa
From: dsa@dlogics.UUCP (David Angulo)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Another letter to the New York Review
Summary: the universe is NOT deterministic (again)
Message-ID: <361@dlogics.UUCP>
Date: 3 Mar 90 20:16:37 GMT
References: <18883@bcsaic.UUCP> <1589@skye.ed.ac.uk> <11488@venera.UUCP> <36Is02Wr8diC01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com>
Organization: Datalogics Inc., Chicago
Lines: 63

In article <36Is02Wr8diC01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com>, kp@uts.amdahl.com (Ken Presting) writes:
> In article <2953@dciem.dciem.dnd.ca> mmt@dretor.dciem.dnd.ca (Martin Taylor) writes:
> >>virtually all chaotic dynamical systems have the characteristic of a
> >>computational horizon beyond which any particular computer cannot keep
> >>up with the physical system in doing the simulation.
> >
> >The problem is not whether a process is computable, or if computable is
> >chaotic, but that there is no way that the *actual* behaviour of any
> >small part of the universe can be described by deterministic laws, even
> >though the entire universe may be.  For the behaviour of a part of the
> >universe to be detemined, that part would have to be isolated from the
> >rest of the universe, and thus be unobservable.
> 
> Pardon my philosophisms, but unobserved does not imply undetermined.
> Sure, we couldn't tell what was happening between observations, but what
> that shows is that we don't know whether our descriptions are true.  It
> does not show that the descriptions are false.  Of course, the usual
> strategy is to take some system which can be reset to some more-or-less
> known state (say, a ball at the top of a ramp), let it run for a while,
> and observe it at the end.  If the outcome is reproducible, then the
> system is deterministic.  Pace Hume, this is a pretty reliable form of
> argument.
> 

As I said before, all these arguments and examples about reproducibility,
determinism, and computability of the universe or ANYTHING are moot.  The
universe (and everything in it) is not deterministic, not reproducible, and
not computable.  Quantum physics dictates that ANYTHING is possible.  There
is only an overriding probability that "normal" type things will happen.
Particles CAN come out of black holes!  But what does this have to do with
thinking systems anyway?

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-- 
David S. Angulo                  (312) 266-3134
Datalogics                       Internet: dsa@dlogics.UUCP
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