Did God Create Chaos?

[Gambit]

you should know that not all physicists believe QM is indeterministic.

I do. That's why I specifically qualified my statements with "according to the Copenhagen or standard interpretation."

The bottom line here is that I have provided you with more than sufficient documentation to support my claim that quantum events are truly random occurrences. Either you accept that or you don't. There's nothing left to debate.

 

[Ouroboros]

The most well-known is Martin-Löf,

Is Martin-Löf considered to be the closest to true/full randomness? I read something about it, and I'm not quite sure.

but we also have Schnorr randomness,

With that kind of random name it must be good!

 

[Ouroboros]

The bottom line here is that I have provided you with more than sufficient documentation to support my claim that quantum events are truly random occurrences. Either you accept that or you don't. There's nothing left to debate.

I read somewhere that quantum events are considered to be the closest we have to true randomness, but it's not agreed upon that it ultimately actually is. It's the best randomness we have, but it's most likely not truly or fully random, simply because it is probabilistic and statistically coherent.

If we have two results. A or B. And there's a 50/50 chance of either or. We can get a series of AAAAAABBBBABBBB or BBBABBBAAABAA and so on. In the end, over time, the 50/50 probability should work out and A should be represented close to 50% of the time. A truly random sequence would allow it to be 100% A's and 0% B's at any given time, infinitely. If it was truly, fully, unconditionally random any sequence, even the ones where A is massively dominant or B is, would be just as likely as the 50/50 distribution. (I think, but correct me if I'm wrong, that's the Martin-Löf interpretation of randomness.)

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Is Martin-Löf considered to be the closest to true/full randomness?

Uh, no, most definitely not. Sorry. I meant that ML-random is the most widely used "model" for algorithmic randomness, which is very different both from other kinds of mathematical randomness and from the colloquial, "intuitive" meaning of the word. I was responding to whether or not I had confused "pseudorandom" with "random." The problem is that pseudorandom vs. random involves a specific type of "randomness" (namely, algorithmic) and is very much tied to computational complexity and computability. It and all other similar definitions are quite different from the randomness of QM or classical mechanics.

 

[Ouroboros]

Uh, no, most definitely not. Sorry. I meant that ML-random is the most widely used "model" for algorithmic randomness, which is very different both from other kinds of mathematical randomness and from the colloquial, "intuitive" meaning of the word. I was responding to whether or not I had confused "pseudorandom" with "random." The problem is that pseudorandom vs. random involves a specific type of "randomness" (namely, algorithmic) and is very much tied to computational complexity and computability. It and all other similar definitions are quite different from the randomness of QM or classical mechanics.

Ok. Thanks for explaining that.

 

[Gambit]

I read somewhere that quantum events are considered to be the closest we have to true randomness, but it's not agreed upon that it ultimately actually is. It's the best randomness we have, but it's most likely not truly or fully random, simply because it is probabilistic and statistically coherent.

According to the Copenhagen interpretation of QM (the standard interpretation of QM accepted by the majority of physicists), quantum events are truly random events. I furnished this thread with more than sufficient documentation to back up this claim.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I do. That's why I specifically qualified my statements with "according to the Copenhagen or standard interpretation."

However, you didn't specify what you think this interpretation to be (or why you consider them one interpretation). We can debate the nuances of various conceptions of random forever, but even were we to agree on a definition or model this cannot make your original statement either right or wrong. First because, as you point out, your original statement concerned the CI, not just quantum mechanics. Second, because granted that you understand the position (and that one exists) of the CI, that you are then justified in saying what you did (and how).

I have given you more than once both in my words and others (via sources I've provided you) as to what the standard/orthodox interpretation and CI are (or is, if one thinks they are close enough to be counted together). You have not done this. Nor have indicated (except through a reference to computability theory) how your conception of "truly random" in QM differs from the same randomness we find all over classical physics or other kinds we find when dealing with deterministic systems no less.

The bottom line here is that I have provided you with more than sufficient documentation to support my claim that quantum events are truly random occurrences

You linked me to wikipedia and other online sources and ignored my explanations, my quotations from experts, and the expert literature I provided you. I can continue to provide such "documentation" for a very long time, and you can continue to ignore it, but claiming to have provided documentation just because you ignore mine and are capable of using google & wikipedia is hardly sufficient to support anything other than the claim that you are able to find two of the most popular websites on the internet.

Either you accept that or you don't. There's nothing left to debate.

Of course there is. Were there not, we'd agree. All the above means is that you refuse to. Which is fine. I didn't really believe you would consider counterarguments or opposing views (though I hoped), and as usual my central intention didn't and doesn't involve convincing you of anything. As ever, when I disagree with some part (or the whole) of another's post I respond for the sake of all others who read it. When people post information about things I do not know about, sometimes I know that the individual is someone I trust on such a topic, and when I don't know I would like to think there are those here would correct errors (much the way wikipedia works). When the topic is something I know, I do the same.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

The Copenhagen interpretation, such as it is said to exist, is largely regarded to be the work of Born alongside other giants such as Heisenberg. Yet it is easy to see that we do not find in this or in any "standard" interpretations the aforementioned "truly random" fluctuations:

(scanned from
Mittelstaedt, P. (2004). The interpretation of quantum mechanics and the measurement process. Cambridge University Press.)

Note first that the interpretation "used in the present-day literature" is the statistical or "Born interpretation". For those who are not used to the formalisms of quantum physics (and actually here we find more general mathematical formalism as opposed to the standard and highly idiomatic Dirac notation), that portion of the equation in the third line from the top that rests between these | | and is squared represents the mod square of the amplitude that gives us the dynamical state of the system (and whence quantum "weirdness" arises). However, as noted in the passage, this notation and the "Born interpretation [of it]...used in the present-day literature" has no physical meaning. It corresponds to know event, it "must not be related to the system" that it seems to describe but rather "as the probabilities of finding the value ai after measurement of the observable A of the system S with preparation phi". This is curious, as all observables in quantum mechanics are mathematical functions called operators, and they can no more be measure than can a plus sign or multiplication. The carry-over from the language of classical physics aside, the clear point is that the standard interpretation doesn't say anything about randomness occurring in the quantum realm because it holds that as we have no access to this realm it is a mathematical abstraction. All we can refer to are what we can measure, and thus the representations of quantum systems have no physical significance such that they could be "random" or have "random" properties.

However, while it was and often still is standard practice to treat quantum systems as mathematical entities that can't be "truly random" any more than addition can, what exactly the CI and/or standard interpretation is has been the subject of so much debate some regard it as a myth:
“As Henry Stapp notes, although there is an extensive literature which discusses and criticises the Copenhagen interpretation, one is immediately struck by the diversity of views “in prevailing conceptions of the Copenhagen interpretation” which appear in the literature (Stapp 1972, 1068). One of the key reasons for this, as many authors have pointed out, is that Bohr and Heisenberg never set out in any clear fashion the basic commitments of the Copenhagen interpretation, and their writings are somewhat ambiguous and elusive on this point.”
Camilleri, K. (2009). Constructing the myth of the Copenhagen interpretation. Perspectives on science, 17(1), 26-57.

Spoiler: What Stapp says

Recently, perhaps partly in response to the severe technical difficulties now besetting quantum theory at the fundamental level, there has been mounting criticism of the Copenhagen interpretation. The charges range from the claim that it is a great illogical muddle to the claim that it is in any case unnecessary, and hence, in viewof its radical nature, should be rejected. Reference 1 contains some stoutly worded attacks on the Copenhagen interpretation. Reference 2 is a more moderately worded review article that firmly rejects the Copenhagen interpretation. Reference 3 is a list of articles in the physical literature that espouse a variety of views on the question.
The striking thing about these articles is the diversity they reveal in prevailing conceptions of the Copenhagen interpretation itself. For example, the picture of the Copenhagen interpretation painted in reference 1 is quite different from the pictures painted in references 2 and 3 by practicing physicists. And these latter pictures themselves are far from uniform.
The cause of these divergences is not hard to find. Textbook accounts of the Copenhagen interpretation generally gloss over the subtle points. For clarification readers are directed to the writings of Bohr and Heisenberg. Yet clarification is difficult to find there. The writings of Bohr are extraordinarily elusive. They rarely seem to say what you want to know. They weave a web of words around the Copenhagen interpretation but do not say exactly what it is. Heisenberg’s writings are more direct. But his way of speaking suggests a subjective interpretation that appears quite contrary to the apparent intentions of Bohr.

However we approach the issue, then, quantum mechanics isn't "truly random" in some way that classical mechanics isn't (it is almost certainly indeterministic where classical physics is not), nor does the CI justify such an assertion. Rather, while "random" in common parlance means "unpredictable", QM is from the ground up a framework designed to make predictions. Finally, we can't even say what it is that QM makes predictions of such that we can speak of what is or isn't "truly random" even were we to equate this randomness with predictability:
“To conclude: probabilities in quantum physics do not reflect our lack of knowledge, and they are in this respect completely different from classical probabilities. In quantum physics, we cannot have a better knowledge than that contained in the state vector (or wave function) which, in general, allows us only to predict the probabilities for observing some result. Now, should the state vector be identified with our state of knowledge, or does it describe an underlying reality? This question is still hotly debated today”

Le Bellac, M. (2012). The role of probabilities in physics. Progress in biophysics and molecular biology, 110(1), 97-105.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Almost forgot a rather essential part: is the Copenhagen interpretation (CI) the still used?

“We deliberately distinguish the standard interpretation from the Copenhagen interpretation, which introduces the additional assumption of the necessity of fundamental, irreducible classical concepts in order to describe quantum phenomena, including measurements...The Copenhagen interpretation additionally postulates that classicality is not to be derived from quantum mechanics, for example, as the macroscopic limit of an underlying quantum structure (as is in some sense assumed, but not explicitly derived, in the standard interpretation). Instead it prescribes that classicality ought to be viewed as an indispensable and irreducible element of a complete quantum theory—and, in fact, be considered as a concept prior to quantum theory. In particular, the Copenhagen interpretation assumes the existence of macroscopic measurement apparatuses that obey classical physics and that are not supposed to be described in quantum-mechanical terms (in stark contrast to the von Neumann measurement scheme). Such classical apparatuses are considered necessary in order to make quantum-mechanical phenomena accessible to us in terms of the “classical” world of our experience.”
Schlosshauer, M. A. (2007). Decoherence: and the quantum-to-classical transition. Springer.

“And, crucially,

‘it is decisive to recognize that, however far the phenomena transcend the scope of classical physical explanation, the account of all evidence must be expressed in classical terms.’ ([63], p. 39)

The last of the above comments identifies a distinctive aspect of the Copenhagen interpretation, clearly differentiating it from the approach of the Basic interpretation, namely, that all experimental arrangements are required to be classically specifiable; quantum phenomena are viewed as dependent on the (classical) measuring apparatus involved in measurement.”
Jaeger, G. (2009). Entanglement, information, and the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Springer.

So intricately tied to Bohr's (so very debated) beliefs about QM is the Copenhagen interpretation (rather than the various texts by other leading physicists responsible for the development of QM who gave different, albeit clearer, expositions of what they thought QM to be) that it is typical, as above, to distinguish between the CI and the standard/orthodox position. This is doubly ironic, in that a central reason for wishing to distinguish the two (namely, Bohr's with to solve the difficulties with a quantum realm by pretending it didn't exist such that classical devices must be defined classically and the quantum realm divided from the classical) was motivated by a desire to treat QM as a theory of physics despite its statistical nature. However, once Bohr's banishment was lifted and the classical world somehow thought to emerge from whatever it was that QM described, physicists were still left with an interpretation of QM in which measurements yielded values related not to some system "measured" but to notations derived from the procedural and formal preparation and transcription of the physical into the mathematical as dictated by QM itself. In other words, now the classical world was supposed to emerge from the quantum, but having lifted the CIs divide between the two one was stuck asking how anything physical could emerge from a mathematical realm.

That's the first irony, The second, and related irony, is that the bulk of proponents of the standard interpretation don't actually believe it but rather are increasingly vocal concerning that problems with it. In fact, may be fair to say that it remains the "standard" interpretation only in the sense that it is no longer really treated as an interpretation at all, but the procedural, algorithmic process of using QM, while "interpretations" involve attempts to flesh out what this process involves and seeks some actual link between the mathematical representations of systems and actual physical systems.

 

[Thief]

Forgive me.... I'm still confused !!
~
'mud

It is a well ordered confusion.
ATTA BOY ....Mud

 

[Caligula]

The chaos seems to be pretty well organized .

In all seriousness: I lean towards a combo form the 4th and 1st scenario. In most of the cases randomness is nothing else but order not yet grasped by our minds. I mean the fact that a human mind can not predict the outcome of an event doesn't mean it's chaotic. In the end, the outcome of a coin flip is in order with the natural laws.

How else should I put it? ...The events in itself can not be chaotic, but only the way we perceive the outcome. The fact that an event is natural obliterates the relevance of order/chaos.

The question, though interesting, seems to lead to a nonsense. It's like asking if supernatural exists. ...If a "supernatural" event takes place it would simply cease to be supernatural and will immediately become natural (no matter the times the event took place). In fact we can not even say that the event was supernatural for even one millisecond. It will be assimilated, retroactively, to a natural process.

In regards with order/chaos I kind of have the same perspective as with luck/bad luck.

 

[`mud]

The outcome of the 'flip' provides another solution to the results of the ending to the question of what happens when the 'flip' ends in the 'coin' landing on it's 'edge'.
Bohr and Einstein were both wrong.
Randomness amongst the order observed is merely the result of uncountable possibilities of the direction of the resulting co-ordinates pursued by the un-chosen paths of the seperate and non-predicted directions that all the plasmatic propulsive inertia provided by the CL momentum induced on the non-reflective repulsion of the quantum sub-inertial influence presented on the non-coagulated substrates attracted to ever growing molecules. Condensation must always follow and the resulting coelescense will determine the formation of all the condensates. When all the momentum comes to a stopping point, then and only then will the inflation of the inner resonanant oscillation cease.
There seems to be a dis-continuance in the inflationary growth of the edge of the outer limits of the expansion, like the plasma ran out of inertial force. That's where the reversal of the directional attitudes of the plasma starts to change the appearance of the source of the beginning of the inflation. That's where some persons look to find their 'god creators', and their Gods.
We all know that there are still collisions ocurring everywhere, even trees falling to earth, and galaxies smashing into other galaxies. Ahhhhhhh....I just saw a tiny, tiny gnat, fly into the reflection in the pane of my window....another collision.
~
All of this wordish salad is just more crap for digestion of the mathematical nincompoops.
Crap happens, and nothing can change the way of things, and life is stuff !
And of course...light doesn't really move.
~
Some flipped coins land on their edges.....it does happen !
~
'mud

 

[Thief]

Ok...you are either brilliant beyond everyday understanding....or....
You got a knack for bs.

one more ATTA BOY!

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

All of this wordish salad is just more crap for digestion of the mathematical nincompoops.

Like those idiots who provided you with the physical instantiation of Boolean algebra (your computer) and the internet for you to dismiss the people who provided you with the tools you ridicule them with. How nice it must be to ridicule those who you depend on without fear of consequence because they have provided it for you at no cost to you and with great effort on their part, so that you need not understand it and can mock it and those who continue in that tradition.

 

[`mud]

Some here know of what I speak.....some would like to know.
I am not trying to change the mathematics....only the mis-application of same.
Come on Legion...
you mis-quote many more improper applications than anyone else I see.
And Thief, I'm really quite ignorant,
but I have a napp for the in-obvious application of crap.
Now to be really accurate....you can believe that I am absolutely insane,
or genius, but neither is accurate.
~
Nuff Stuff,
'mud

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

you mis-quote many more improper applications than anyone else I see.

There is perhaps nothing you could say I would find more insulting and find more grievance with. I would ask that you demonstrate how I display or otherwise demonstrate what to me is tantamount to denying that I adhere to one of the few things by which I might identify myself.

 

[`mud]

OK....you want me to demonstrate how you display or demonstrate denial with what you identify ?
OK....I would say that your mathematics are somewhat skewed and non-understandable.
A lot of what you say is sort of like plagiarism of some noted physicist's theories on estimates of un-known entities.
~
But I'm probably confused by the preponderance of the mountain of un-related information you post.
confused am I.....but I'll get over it.......will you ?
~
'mud

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

OK....you want me to demonstrate how you display or demonstrate denial with what you identify ?

Yes.

OK....I would say that your mathematics are somewhat skewed and non-understandable.

That's a claim, not a demonstration.

A lot of what you say is sort of like plagiarisim of some noted physicist's theories on estimates of un-known entities.

This is again especially insulting, so insulting that again there is little you could say of me that would be worse. Yet again, it is a claim for which you offer no evidence whatsoever.

You have succeeded in insulting those few aspects of myself I find some small value in, but not in demonstrating there is reason for doing so. Ironically, it still bitterly stings.

 

[Thief]

And Thief, I'm really quite ignorant,
but I have a napp for the in-obvious application of crap.
Now to be really accurate....you can believe that I am absolutely insane,
or genius, but neither is accurate.
~
Nuff Stuff,
'mud

Clear as mud....you ornery old fart!......love that attitude.

 

[Ouroboros]

Copenhagen interpretation in question. An old idea of pilot waves (bouncing droplets) is resurfacing, and would indicate a deterministic system underlying quantum. If I understand the article right.

Have We Been Interpreting Quantum Mechanics Wrong This Whole Time? | WIRED

In a groundbreaking experiment, the Paris researchers used the droplet setup to demonstrate single- and double-slit interference. They discovered that when a droplet bounces toward a pair of openings in a damlike barrier, it passes through only one slit or the other, while the pilot wave passes through both. Repeated trials show that the overlapping wavefronts of the pilot wave steer the droplets to certain places and never to locations in between — an apparent replication of the interference pattern in the quantum double-slit experiment that Feynman described as “impossible … to explain in any classical way.” And just as measuring the trajectories of particles seems to “collapse” their simultaneous realities, disturbing the pilot wave in the bouncing-droplet experiment destroys the interference pattern.