• 19 Posts
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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2024

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  • gandalf_der_12teto196Captcha rule
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    4 days ago

    yeah you’re right, i’ve also been thinking about developments in a parallel universe a lot.

    i cannot convince myself that the universe is purely deterministic because the universe is huge (it literally includes all things in existence); surely some of all those things must have non-deterministic behavior!

    I have started to think of it as deterministic behavior being actually pretty rare, with just a few things which we can actually predict reliably about the future and a huge sea of chance! It fits my intuition nicely. I must and will investigate these things into a lot of detail, for sure. I’m especially intrigued by seeing the world as a network of events, where deterministic connections run like trails through the network. It’s interesting to see the structure of it all.










  • Thank you for taking the patience to put this into words so nicely! I really appreciate your perspective. Maybe I was being too rude calling Republicans “dumb”, I apologize. I guess I’m just as angry as many other people at seeing the proposed Republican plans (especially “slashing public spending” a.k.a. reducing social welfare) and seeing people actually vote for that.

    Yeah, people in the US want change. I’m not sure what would be a productive and viable proposal that doesn’t completely fuck up the country. I’m European and have a non-interference policy for myself when it comes to the internals of the US. In other words, I don’t want to meddle too much with what’s going on in the US.


  • Truth is a lot like the stars. There’s one big one, and a lot of small ones. Maybe we just have to accept that quantum physics is all about the many small ones.

    To be honest, I’m not sure what you mean by this.

    I will try to explain, but it might be a bit difficult for me to put it into proper formulation.

    I will try to explain it with a picture, if I can. You start with a base condition called x(0). It represents some physical quantity in time. As the system evolves, the quantity becomes x(t). Now, you can draw this graphically with “trajectories”, which are lines that draw out the curve that x(t) is making over time.

    What happens, due to randomness, is that this trajectory splits up into many smaller ones. This is what I meant with “small truths”. Then they unify again, when the randomness becomes irrelevant again, and that is what i meant with a “big truth”. Maybe I just put it badly at words before, English is not my native language either.



  • Just curious but are we heading towards an “eat the rich” society?

    I guess we should be, but that’s just my personal opinion.

    Realistically, no. The people have clearly expressed how dumb they are and what they desire in the November election. They want dumb Republicans, they get asshole CEOs. I don’t see it any other way.

    Honestly, I believe voting is the best way to bring change about a society that wants to change. It’s just that I have given up the thought that the US wants to change in the direction that I would go. So no, it’s not gonna happen.


  • Very interesting point! I feel that there is a lot to say about the ontology in quantum physics; (and I’m interested in that myself).

    I’ve adopted a few views that helped me cope with the practically non-existent explanation of what is really going on:

    1. Our brains are meat computers. Theories talk about the following: What does a computer measure after they have performed an experiment? In other words, theory isn’t supposed to be emotionally fulfilling. It is merely making predictions for the computer.

    2. Truth is a lot like the stars. There’s one big one, and a lot of small ones. Maybe we just have to accept that quantum physics is all about the many small ones.


  • gandalf_der_12teto196Captcha rule
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    15 days ago

    In real life I think a similar situation holds. First we have to make a distinction between a system having randomness; a completely unpredictable outcome and being chaotic; where the outcome is theoretically predictable but varies significantly with even tiny changes in input.

    Yes, thank you for putting it so nicely into words. I was already aware of that distinction.

    I’m studying physics right now and trying to organize my thoughts around that. I remember we talked about some mechanical contraption that exhibits non-deterministic (i.e. purely random) behavior due to the equations of motion having non-unique solution. If I remember correctly, it was a kind of “knife standing on its tip right at the edge of a cliff”-edge condition. There’s two solutions to that: It stands still or it falls down. There’s two distinctly different solutions because the equations of motion are non-continuous, i.e. even for the tiniest change in position, the net force changes from 0 to 1g.

    Apart from that, there’s some more “pure random” stuff that I’m investigating into right now, like quantum stuff (as you mentioned). But there’s at least one more example that I’d like to think about:

    A human/robot cannot fully predict their own future. That is because if they could, they could become aware of it and decidedly act against it. For example, if I predict that I will eat an avocado tomorrow, I might stop myself from doing that. So the prediction becomes wrong. In a certain sense, therefore one cannot predict their own actions. This isn’t due to a lack in accuracy, but it’s fundamentally impossible. I guess. Let me hear your thoughts! Your words are calm and collected; you seem to know stuff.


  • gandalf_der_12teto196Captcha rule
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    17 days ago

    Btw, off topic; do you believe in true randomness? In other words, do you think that certain physics processes simply have an unpredictable outcome? (I’m asking because your response implies “No”, but I believe it is “yes”.)