Is The Uncertainty Principle Incompatible With Determinism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

A metacognitive bias wherein individuals unskilled in a particular field are so unskilled in that field that they don't know just how unskilled they even are, leading to a mistakenly inflated sense of how skilled they are in that field Remind anyone of discussion of Quantum Mechanics on the internet?

When most Quantum Physicists do not understand what the theory means or how to interpret the results, what chance do we armchair physicists stand?

"The study was inspired by the case of McArthur Wheeler, a man who robbed two banks after covering his face with lemon juice in the mistaken belief that, because lemon juice is usable as invisible ink, it would prevent his face from being recorded on surveillance cameras."

Sounds like most discussions here XD

Just some self-deprecating humour for those who can take it! (but also being super cereal)

 

I can relate, it seems to be most noticeable in fields with a steep learning curve. You learn a lot at first, realizing how much more skilled you are now than you were until you learn just enough to realize how much more you really don't know, then you learn a little more and the cycle kind of repeats.

 

You're confusing our ability as humans to compute the outcomes of evidents, with those events actually having determined outcomes. Those are two very different things. We could live in a completely deterministic universe and never come close to being able to predict simple coin tosses with any accuracy, simply due to limitations in brain power and artificial computation.

Laws are indeed human concepts, but to say the universe "doesnt give a shit" about them is to misunderstand where those laws come from; they are not prescriptive, like the ten commandments; they are descriptive. A scientific law is only a behavior that we see in the universe that appears with such regularity that it is as though the universe were following it as a law. Don't let the language confuse you; first comes the universe behaving a certain way, then comes humans noticing this and calling it a law of the universe.

Determinism doesn't care about any of this; determinism only asks "May I please see the one who is making the decisions?"

 

Isn't our consciousness itself necessarily undetermined, then? Because we may live in a deterministic world, but we may live in a non-deterministic world. We can't measure it with 100% accuracy, so we just can't know. Isn't this the very definition of something being non-deterministic? Is something determining us to not be able to determine if something is determining us? So I don't see how, even if the physical laws of the universe are deterministic, that our bodies, not being able to determine if the world is determined or not, are acting totally in accord with these physical laws. We're sort of stuck in a state of limbo, like Schrodinger's cat before the box is opened.

 

No I'm not confusing that at all. That is exactly what i meant when I said "Human uncertainty exists on a far lower resolution that the actual quantum world". It's like you have not understood a single explanation I've said. There's clearly two different types of uncertainty at play in our world; Human uncertainty where we can't observe most quantum activity and are limited to interpolating results after atom level collisions, and then real quantum world uncertainty where there is most likely some degree of real random unpredictability in particle or quark or sub quark field interactions.

The most accurate scientific instruments ever can measure changes in 1X10^-15 meters, about the width of one proton. Quarks are 50 times smaller, neutrinos are 100 times smaller, and the estimated planck length is over a quintillion times smaller. Our understanding of the universe smaller than protons is a universe of theories and assumptions, limited mathematical interpretations. We have to cut off the decimal place at some point and that is our limit of accuracy. The theory of planck length suggests that the fabric of space-time has a limit of accuracy (1X10^-35 meters). Clearly there are degrees of determinism, some things may accurately be determined for millions or even billions of years. But determined for trillions of years, no, eternity, no. If you think the human interpolated laws of thermodynamics hold true over trillions of years, then you're making gross assumptions far exceeding human limits of accuracy and knowledge.

 

Because whether or not your body acts in accordance with deterministic laws has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not your consciousness is aware of and can explain those deterministic laws.

It's like saying "How do I know that my body's cells run on ATP when I've never studied biology? How can we ever really know, if we don't know what ATP is?"

Well they run on ATP whether you've read a book about it or not! Same goes for reality at large and deterministic laws.

Your understanding of it all is quite remotely secondary.

You're still making the same error.

Your retort to determinism is that upon analysis of quantum mechanics, you've determined that there is "most likely some degree of real random unpredictability" (which itself does not undermine determinism at all, and is in fact an empirical claim, which could be proven wrong next year), and then in the next paragraph, you talk about how our measurements are so poor that really our knowledge of QM is just an educated guess.

I agree that we need to always be skeptical about the veracity of our science; that is the very foundation of science. QM is a baffling thing and we are struggling to interpret it; what are the odds that right now, at this point, we have nailed down the right interpretation?

But whether or not we KNOW how a particular system works (our selves, our bodies, our universe), that is quite a different thing from whether or not those things follow particular outcomes based on particular conditions, mechanisms, and behaviors.

Found a random post online where someone was arguing the same point as me:

 

I'd say it's more like that first humans are aware of the way the universe works, and then humans calling it a law. You simply can't prove that the universe exists without an observer of it first.

 

So I would say that since Scientists themselves can't even pin it down, that I don't really feel that "un-educated" about any of it. It's not like you need to have a degree in QM in order to utilize its benefits, in the same way that a musician doesn't necessarily need to know how to build a guitar in order to play it.

 

Well wasn't all of Science considered complete due to Determinism until Quantum Mechanics came along in the first place? So classically, aren't they rather incompatible?

 

Then we might as well not even talk about Quantum Mechanics at all, if the top Scientists also apparently don't understand it.

It seems to me that Quantum Mechanics itself leaves the door open for creative, diverse, and infinite interpretations. Whatever conclusion you come to will be what "locks" in to reality on a Quantum level, but I think that there's room for a vast variety of outcomes. I think it has proved that so far since we have had the concept of Quantum Mechanics. It's fair to treat it like an art-form. I'm not about to feel any less educated than the top Scientists if they can't even say for sure what it is.

 

This becoming a pointless argument, and disappointing because I figured you would be smarter than this. Seriously, if you think ANY degree of random unpredictability DOES NOT undermine determinism, then you clearly don't understand determinism. Determinism has never been proven, there is no elegantly perfect QM model. Yes we are very limited in understanding and observational accuracy. Yes, these are theories, we do not have the means to prove either way but some things make more sense than other, some things are more logical and intellectually more honest than others. What do you think is more intellectually honest; "quark movements are predictable to the googolplexian interaction" or "quark movements are predictable to the billionth interaction". Saying you believe in determinism means you believe quantum interaction are accurate to the infinite degree" . This is simply not as intellectually honest as saying that there's probably an inherent limit to QM accuracy.

 

I wouldn't necessarily call unpredictability a trait of accuracy or lack thereof...it's just that chaos and unpredictability is an inherent part of Nature, and this is obvious without any need for Science to be part of the discussion. Of course Science is going to bump into this at some point, whether on the Quantum level or in other areas.

I agree with the rest of what you said but I don't think unpredictability = inaccuracy. I would agree it's not compatible with determinism, though.

 

The KNOWING and the Laws are one and the same! If you never read anything about how your biology works, then fundamentally, any concepts regarding your biology are meaningless non-existence. You could just call it "Bodyness" if you wanted to, and every function of your biology would instead just follow the laws of Bodyness, with Mells that walk on ZXM. We created our labels and concepts for Biology. Biology didn't create those concepts. We as humans look at raw data and come up with names for it. And isn't this Observation already messing with the raw data on a Quantum level?

There's no such thing as laws that are independent of both our OBSERVATION AND LABELING OF THOSE LAWS. Our language creates all of it. There's no escaping this fact. Mathematics didn't create itself. Humans created Mathematics.

Gravity essentially doesn't exist until we call it Gravity. It actually used to be considered an Occult force. But it's all just labels. If you walk off a building, yes you will fall, but you might as well call it God deciding that it's your time to die. And you won't know that you will fall until you OBSERVE it.

It's literally IMPOSSIBLE to escape the fact that Consciousness is primary to anything regarding Matter. You don't even need to have ever even heard of Quantum Mechanics and you can still come to this realization.

 

Actually, I am quite certain that I will fall, I don't have to try it myself to find out. I know the gravitational force of acceleration on earth is 9.8m/s², and know that it is unlikely that the laws of physics (or god if you prefer) will decide to make an exception for me allowing me to hit the ground softly. If I walk off a building, if anyone has decided that it was my time to die it would be my own decision.

 

Actually, I am quite certain that I will fall, I don't have to try it myself to find out. I know the gravitational force of acceleration on earth is 9.8m/s²

Yes because you have seen movies and been told and have witnessed for yourself how you will fall. You know that the gravitational force of acceleration is 9.8m/s squared because you were taught that concept in school. ALL OF THAT relies on your Observation. Observation is still primary.

 

A scientific law is only a behavior that we see in the universe that appears with such regularity that it is as though the universe were following it as a law. Don't let the language confuse you; first comes the universe behaving a certain way, then comes humans noticing this and calling it a law of the universe.

Determinism doesn't care about any of this; determinism only asks "May I please see the one who is making the decisions?"

Observation is still the primary factor here. There's no way to know the way that the Universe is behaving until we humans start observing it and analyzing it and labeling it. You just can't say anything about how the universe behaves until you observe it first.

Even with your final point regarding Determinism, which is a human construct of a concept, it's still asking to see who or what is making any decisions. Whatever is decided from this question, Observation is once again the key component here that is easily overlooked.

 

The book didn't really get into Classical Mechanics, I don't really know the relationship between Classical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics. I think the Theory of Relativity displaced some held notions of Classical Mechanics but I'm not sure it suggested anything about the Philosophy of Determinism.

Max Tegmark pointed out otherwise on the discussion between him and Sam Harris of the podcast discussion which was posted earlier. Some of the examples Tegmark gave of the Mathematics preceding observations were the discovery of Neptune and the discovery of the Higgs Boson candidate. By the way, I don't really have a horse in the race as to whether Mathematics has some autonomous existence outside of human consciousness just providing this info from a well respected physicist/cosmologist who you, even yourself have posted information from before.

 

Any discoveries in this manifest 3D realm require our Observation, Consciousness, Awareness, whatever you want to call it.

 

No, it'll hold true for any non-flying animal that they'll fall, regardless of what movies they've seen.

 

This sounds a lot like "If a tree falls in a forest where no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound". Of course it makes a sound (or more specifically, percussive vibrations in the surrounding air .. sound waves), it just wasn't heard by you because you weren't there. Now if your definition of "a sound", is "air vibrations that were heard by someone with ears and a brain", then I guess it didn't make a "sound", but the same physics happen respective of the falling tree whether you observe it or not (excluding whatever physics happen inside of the mind of the one perceiving the sound). The behavior of the falling tree does not change just because you weren't there to watch it.

Trees and such are macro scale objects, and follow classical mechanics. QM "seems" to be pretty quirky, appearing as if observation influences the behavior, but I think it's mostly illusory, and probably has less to do with an observer being conscious than the fact that any measurement that pins any property down to a specific, records this information in the universe, leaving a permanent trace, forcing it into a particular state at that instance.

I'm sure any actual physicist could tell you much more about the specifics of how this works, but I'm also pretty sure an actual physicist would be making far less claims, if any as to what any of this actually means as it pertains to the discussion here.

^ something like this.