kck@g.cs.cmu.edu (Karl Kluge) (09/08/86)
In article <165@BMS-AT.UUCP>, stuart@BMS-AT.UUCP (Stuart D. Gathman) writes: > This is exactly right! The only consistent cosmologies I have ever > encountered are built on either > > a) Total meaninglessness (existentialism). > b) A first cause (God). > > Note that quantum mechanics does not provide evidence for either view. Not quite true. For instance, Berkley's argument for the existance of God runs something like there has to be a Meta-observer who is responsible for the world staying consistent when we aren't around to observe it. The paradox of Schroedinger's Cat and experiments which seem to establish the existance of systems in juxtapositions of states, where the waveform only collapses into a particular state when the state of the system is observed, would seem to refute this argument, as the existence of the Meta-observer would cause the system to fall into some state. > Just because we are incapable of observing a cause does not mean that > it doesn't exist (unless you subscribe to (a) in which case it doesn't > matter). On the contrary, it matters a great deal in trying to work out whether or not there is free will. > matter). The Heisenberg uncertainty principle can mean either > > 1) There is a certain amount of randomness in nature which makes > measurements beyond a certain precision meaningless. > > 2) There is a certain level of detail in nature which we are incapable > of observing due to our finite nature. (After all, there are more > atoms in the universe than in all our brains and computers put together.) > The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says exactly what the math states, which is that the product of the uncertainty of the meausurement of the position of a particle and the uncertainty of the measurement of the velocity is at least a certain constant. It has nothing to do with our finite nature and everything to do with the fact the measuring the value of one of the variables to some precision inevitably effects the value of the other variable in a way that can't be untangled (to know the effect that the impact of the radiation you're using to measure the position of a particle is going to have on the velocity of the particle, you would need to know exectly the position on velocity of the particles in the beam of radiation, which can't both be measured to arbitrary precision because of the HUP). So as you can see, it also has nothing to do with "randomness". There are simply fundamental limitations on the knowledge one can have of the state of a quantum mechanical system. Chip Kluge (kck@g.cs.cmu.edu) All standard disclaimers apply except this one.