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When galaxies collide; and we're not talking Fords
Topic Started: Apr 21 2008, 05:00 AM (2,346 Views)
Aqua Letifer
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ZOOOOOM!
Klaus
Apr 22 2008, 10:11 AM
Aqua, if there is no randomness, why does quantum mechanics describe the location of particles by a probability function?

I didn't mean to imply that there was no randomness at all.

Only that many systems -- I have environmental systems in mind when I say this because this comes up a lot -- that appear random and chaotic are really not at all.
I cite irreconcilable differences.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Axtremus
Apr 21 2008, 09:11 AM

That's premature, IT hasn't enter the fray yet. :D

:popcorn: Mik does not need my help. And I find the discussion fascinating (even if the protagonists' positions are somewhat predictable).

That is my whole contribution.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Klaus
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HOLY CARP!!!
ivorythumper
Apr 22 2008, 08:45 PM
(even if the protagonists' positions are somewhat predictable).

hey, it's the whole point of the thread that it's all (or isn't) predictable :wink:
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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John D'Oh
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MAMIL
The 89th Key
Apr 22 2008, 02:29 PM
You want randomness? Here you go:

Posted Image

That's actually very well-ordered. If you put it into a blender it would become random.
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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Moonbat
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Pisa-Carp
Klaus
Apr 22 2008, 05:41 PM
Moonbat
Apr 22 2008, 06:59 PM
The problem is that you imagine natural scientists think like mathematicians and want what mathematicians want but they don't and they don't. I don't care about ...

Look, sentences like these are why you sometimes come across as condescending.

You seem to think that you are in a position to speak for all natural scientists, and others who are "outside the circle" aren't.

I for one am not an expert in physics (although I am at least familiar with the major basic ideas), but on the other hand I guess I know a lot more than you about other areas that are equally relevant to natural science, such as information theory, systems science, modeling, logic, or computability.

So, please don't try to educate me what "you natural scientists" think.


I wasn't trying to appeal to authority nor did I intend in any sense to denigrate your considerable knowledge. Indeed I am quite jealous of your insight into the fields that you mention all i meant was to clarify that different people in different disciplines have different motivations are looking for different kinds of answers.

When the phycists come up with a solution to the Levinthal's paradox by showing that there is a funnel in the potential energy surface of a protein and that's how the proteins finds it's correct 3d structure a biochemists ask how it affects his/her particular protein(s) and is disinterested when they discover it has little relevence to the questions they are interested in. When i point to a term in an equation and ask a mathematician what the term represents and he says it's a "parameter" and i ask i say "yes but what does it mean physically?" he looks at me blank faced not understanding the question i'm asking. When a chemists asks for a mechanism to an organic reaction and is satisfied with some shapes and curly arrows between them a physicist is horrified by the qualitative nature of the description. When Feynman says that you can try and understand physics purely by having a mathematical understanding of the equations but that that you will miss something and that in order to make progress you need to gain physical insight there are mathematicians who have absolutely no idea what he means.

When i look at some of your statements i can't help thinking that we are talking across purposes that we mean different things. It's not that i think you are somehow worse off for being a computer scientists only that you have a different focus and approach and so there is much scope for misunderstanding.

When i say that the standard model ultimately accounts for the motion of the animals all i mean it captures the dynamics in the same way that it captures the dynamics of sub-atomic particles because animals are collections of particles!

To say the standard model does not account for them is either claiming

1) Animals are not simply particles - that they have souls or other non particle like components that influence the particles - violating the known laws of physics.

or

2) That they are particles but that they are particles but somehow behave differently when they are in animals - violating the known laws of physics

or

3) That they are particles but the standard model is not accurate enought to capture their dynamics. That just isn't true because they are no where near the energy regime where gravity would start to be relevent. You cite chaos theory but you're already dealing with quantum field theory - you already have fluctuations that are orders upon orders of magnitude more significant than any deviation caused by the innacuracy of the sm due to it's neglect of gravity. In terms of the phenomena we see the added accuracy of quantum gravity will not add anything - in a universe where there is no quantum gravity where GR goes all the way down animals would display the same kind of behaviour they do now (given the same environment).
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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