Is Physical Matter Determinate?

[NowAgnostic]

Digits of PI do not exhibit statistical randomness. Run the randomness tests on them and you will discover they have a non-random nature.

piworld.de/pi-statistics/pist_longruns.htm

Well I stand corrected. Thanks for pointing this out.

 

[Hosh]

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle provides that it will never be knowable. Some Physicists think the universe is fundamentally deterministic, others believe there are particles randomly flirting in and out of existence (quantum foam).

 

[stenlis]

The behaviour of a dripping fosset is described by a strange attractor, which is a chaotic model. So no the behaviour of the fosset is not completely predicable and determined.

The chaos model is determinate. What it says is that very small changes in the initial conditions may develop into a very big change overtime.

Or in otherwords - we cannot calculate the result of a chaotic process not because it would be random, but because our calculation would need to have infinite precision.

 

[stenlis]

This may be precisely why the quantum measurement process is only probabilistically determinate. When an observer measures, suddenly his will encroaches upon the matter previously outside his control, perhaps rendering it only probabilistically determinate.

The curious thing is that the probabilistic distribution of an outcome of a measurement does not differ from observer to observer. If your will would affect matter you observe, it should affect it in a different way than my will. Yet my measurements of an electron spin will come out 50/50 just as yours will. And we both will see the same results of one another’s measurements. Our individual wills don’t seem to affect quanta.

 

[geometer]

The chaos model is determinate. What it says is that very small changes in the initial conditions may develop into a very big change overtime.

Or in otherwords - we cannot calculate the result of a chaotic process not because it would be random, but because our calculation would need to have infinite precision.

Strange attractors are critically determined chaotic processes. I really don’t understand the question in the opening post anyway. I think its nonsense.