Random Thought #30

[[xeno]Julios]

Same thing with randomness - they assume it's a random process that's causing the event, when all we have are empirical data showing that the collapses are randomly distributed.

There's a difference - you can design deterministic algorithims to produce effectively random distributions - but that doesn't mean the underlying process itself was random.

Of course, but do you really believe they don't realize that?

You'd be surprised. Besides, whether or not they realize it, they gloss it almost all the time and just make claims about how quantum events are random, without clarifying.

[Guest]

http://consc.net/online.html

"2498 online papers on consciousness and related topics"

For you Jules.

Hey that is pretty cool.

[GONNAFISTYA]

What?

Reading?

[MKJ]

I'm no physicist, but I think a problem might be that we can't "detect" information at a subatomic level without affecting it at the same time. That is to say detecting this information would be irrelevant because as soon as you do that, the information no longer applies.

Yea, like I mentioned before...look up the observer's paradox

Lazy bastards....and werldheld gets the cookie?!?

because werldheld and his annoying-to-type name summed it up in about 2 sentences where as you foolishy tried to motivate kracus into actually reading up on the subject

[werldhed]

I'm no physicist, but I think a problem might be that we can't "detect" information at a subatomic level without affecting it at the same time. That is to say detecting this information would be irrelevant because as soon as you do that, the information no longer applies.

Yea, like I mentioned before...look up the observer's paradox

Lazy bastards....and werldheld gets the cookie?!?

Heh... I am the stealer of thunder!

Honestly, I didn't notice the part about the the observer's paradox (and I had never heard of it before, either). I saw what you wrote about Schroedinger's Cat, and it made me think about observation and outcomes, although I thought Schroedinger was more about uncertainty and multi-states than affecting outcomes. So, I didn't really realize that you had said the same thing I did. Sorry about that. I should add a reference to you in my post.

But, as MKJ said, it's not like kracus was going to look it up for himself anyway.

And yeah, I really should change this name... It kind of sucks.