>>>Chris Cogan: The results of the experiment are fantastic, wonderful,
exciting. But they don't invalidate determinism. My initial claim stands.
It's not even logically possible for empirical evidence to invalidate
indeterminism as such. It is only possible for it to invalidate *specific*
claims of determinism (such as Einstein's, in this case), claims in which a
specific causal relation is asserted. If that specific relationship does not
hold, we may be able to show it empirically. For example, if I claimed that
the way dice landed was determined completely by the positions of the planets
(and gave a formula or other means of specifying the outcome of a throw of
dice based on the positions of the planets), it would be easy to test whether
this was true or not.
But, if we determined that it was not true, we would not be justified in
saying that the dice behaved in a truly indeterministic way; there might be
*other* causal factors at work that determine the way the dice land.
******************************
DNAunion: Okay, I might be misinterpretting your statements, but it sounds
to me like you are saying determinism cannot be empirically invalidated in
any experiment (if I am wrong, let me know).
If that is your positions, what about the infamous double-slit experiments?
When a beam of light (stream of photons) is "shot" though a double-slit
apparatus, the result is a wave-inteference pattern on the detector (bands of
high concentration of photon hits interspersed at regular intervals with
bands of low concentration of photon hits). That is, the light acts as a
wave, with constructive and destructive inteference properties.
But if only a single photon is "shot" through the double-slit apparatus,
where will it land on the detector? Without any other photons to interact
with, their can be no wave-like constructive and destructive interefence to
consider, and the photon should behave like a solid particle - following an
absolutely straight path and striking the detector (in a manner like a bullet
would). One should be able to draw a photon-sized bullseye on the detector
and hit it every time a single photon is shot through the double-slit
apparatus. But can this be done?
No. The single photon inteferes with itself and the location of the "single
dot" it produces on the detector cannot be predicted. Probability rules.
Where waves would reinforce were a stream of photons shot through
simultaneously, one is more likely to find the strike-site of that single
photon; and where waves would cancel out each other were a stream of photons
shot through simultaneously, one is less likely to find the strike-site of
that single photon.
Certainty gives way to probability, as does determinism.
The tunneling of particles through a barrier also takes advantage of
probability (wave properties). In the Sun, even with the intense found found
there, the energies that protons have is insufficient to overcome the
electromagnetic replusion they have for one another: the energy barrier they
have to cross in order to combine is too great. Yet protons DO
collide/combine in the Sun - how is this possible? Because they have enough
energy to make it part way up the energy barrier, and as they do, the
probability of finding themselves on the other side of the barrier (because
of their wave properties) increases, and a small percentage actually do cross
the barrier (despite not having enough energy to do so). Again, one cannot
say confidently whether or not two particular protons will combine -
probability rules.
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