Miscellaneous Chatter > The Forum of Interesting Things
The Intellectual War on Science
TLEILAXU:
--- Quote from: H on March 01, 2018, 09:09:04 pm ---
--- Quote from: TLEILAXU on March 01, 2018, 07:27:47 pm ---I'm not an expert on this, but from googling around it seems consensus is relatively clear: quantum mechanics are probabilistic.
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As far as we understand. Which, as Wilshire points out, is not complete by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, a "problem" of quantum mechanics is that, while it "works" it fails to integrate with the rest of physics. So, this, in all probability, points to there being an incompleteness to our understanding. It is plausible (I have no idea how probable) that what we can currently understand only as "random" and "probabilistic" might be governed by forces and laws that we simply do not yet understand, nor do we understand how the fundamental particles interact at the macro-scale, which is why physics and quantum mechanics are different fields completely.
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That's not correct though. I've watched enough Nima Arkani Hamed (can recommend this guy, he's awesome) talks to know that quantum physics describes fundamental particles /extremely/ well. The thing that doesn't integrate is relativity and quantum physics, i.e. gravity and the three other forces. Physics and quantum mechanics are not different fields, it's just that depending on what you're looking at requires different tools. For larger systems you need statistical mechanics etc. since you cannot do quantum mechanical calculations on these systems.
--- Quote from: H on March 01, 2018, 09:12:15 pm ---
--- Quote from: themerchant on March 01, 2018, 09:07:16 pm ---
--- Quote from: H on February 28, 2018, 10:00:35 pm ---
--- Quote from: TLEILAXU on February 28, 2018, 09:57:16 pm ---
--- Quote from: Wilshire on February 28, 2018, 08:16:48 pm ---Hurray!
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--- Quote from: Wilshire on February 28, 2018, 07:30:35 pm ---Evolution is a a wholly random process without direction...
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As Above, So Below
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I don't buy that at all. Evolution cannot be random, everything has a cause and effect.
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Aren't quarks and muons described by a different set of rules that don't describe evolution though? So comparing the two doesn't work as what we use to understand one doesn't work to understand the other.
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Yes and futher, now that I think about Wilshire's quote, evolution, through natural selection absolutely is not random, because natural selection is litterally the opposite of "directionless." Natural selection does not favor things randomly, it favors things that are best suited to reproduce. That is a direction and the whole process is "designed" to make organisms better able to make more organisms.
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Even if everything has some deterministic cause, evolution is effectively random. Genetic drift is a huge factor in evolution, and that is basically alleles taking random walks. Even if they're under selection, they still behave stochastic, such that genes that confer advantages can be lost by chance and genes that confer disadvantages (to a certain degree) can get fixed by chance. This is especially pronounced in small populations where random fluctuations have a bigger effect.
themerchant:
Yeah you can't use one theory to describe the other. They aren't compatible. Sure if you add in mathematically extra dimensions to account for the relative weakness of gravity you might create some model but you need an experiment to go along with it, otherwise it's just conjecture.
Scottish Mathematician James Clerk Maxwell unified the electrical and magnetic forces with his elegant equations in his A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, this included experimentation as well as mathematical models.
Quantum gravity is an idea at the moment.
On evolution for it to be truly random wouldn't it be immune to outside influence? I imagine if we took earth and then took a counterfactual earth but lower the temperature 5 degrees evolution would take different paths.
I guess it depends on what you mean by random, there are different meanings to different people.
themerchant:
use relativity to describe gravity in quantum scales you run into infinite gravity problems.
Use quantum mechanics to parse large systems it predicts energy levels so high to be wrong.
themerchant:
Nima Arkani Hamed statisically has already done his greatest work. Most Great physicists do their best work early, much like athletes. I was reading a Paul Dirac biography that was pointing this out. I'll have to get it back out and have a look at it. At 46 it's very unlilkely he'll be the person to solve this for us.
Newton- about 45 but he was late and never published anything. Done much of his work much earlier.
Clerk-maxwell- 34
Einstein- 26
Paul Dirac- 31
"A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of thirty will never do so." Einstein.
http://www.openaccessweek.org/profiles/blogs/age-amp-science-do-scientists-make-their-best-discoveries-during
TLEILAXU:
--- Quote from: themerchant on March 02, 2018, 01:44:33 am ---Yeah you can't use one theory to describe the other. They aren't compatible. Sure if you add in mathematically extra dimensions to account for the relative weakness of gravity you might create some model but you need an experiment to go along with it, otherwise it's just conjecture.
Scottish Mathematician James Clerk Maxwell unified the electrical and magnetic forces with his elegant equations in his A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, this included experimentation as well as mathematical models.
Quantum gravity is an idea at the moment.
On evolution for it to be truly random wouldn't it be immune to outside influence? I imagine if we took earth and then took a counterfactual earth but lower the temperature 5 degrees evolution would take different paths.
I guess it depends on what you mean by random, there are different meanings to different people.
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Random to me just means that you cannot predict something exact, only the probability that x will happen etc.
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