He also could compute answers faster than calculators of the day!
I doubt that.
]]>Ricky wrote:By static, are you trying to say that some jerk flipped to the end of the book and told you how it ends?
I think a better comparison would be to get inside the author's mind and know the story for yourself.
That's ludicrous Jane. How would you fit? I mean, maybe if you're a midget and the author has a really really big head, just maybe. But otherwise, that's crazy.
When you are firing the photon at the screen, doesn't it matter in which direction you fire it? Or are you talking about the case where the photon is fired directly at the space between the two slits?
I don't believe photon firing is an exact science (heh), and we don't have precise control over what direction the photon goes in.
]]>By static, are you trying to say that some jerk flipped to the end of the book and told you how it ends?
I think a better comparison would be to get inside the author's mind and know the story for yourself.
]]>I think what he means is that, if everything is predictable, it doesn't really change in the sense that your predictions are based upon something that doesn't change and you know this, otherwise, there's always a chance that your predictions might be off.
Sorry if this made things any more complicated than before, which is pretty hard.
]]>So a "no-chance" universe would be predictable form end-to-end and would be no better than an already-written book, and hence "static".
If you get my drift maybe you could word it better
]]>And I would argue that without chance the universe is fully predictable, and so would (in a sense) be static.
Predicable and static are two completely different things. Static implies that nothing changes, predictable just means that you know what's going to change and how it's going to change.
When we get to the macroscopic world, all the probabilities (sort of) cancel each other out and things become very predictable.
]]>Here's something to think about: how many variables lead to any given instant in history?
The answer: the number of particles in the universe multiplied by the time of existence of the universe before that instant.
That's classical physics thinking. On the another hand, quantum physics says you can take two exact (and I mean exact) same systems and end up with entirely different results, since the results are based not only upon what's in the system, but chance as well.
]]>Here's something to think about: how many variables lead to any given instant in history?
The answer: the number of particles in the universe multiplied by the time of existence of the universe before that instant. Assuming that time can be divided into infinitely small increments, and that particles may have that same characteristic (it probably doesn't, as far as we can tell), then there are an infinite amount of variables. This may seem exaggerated, but look at it this way: if 10000 years before our observed point, there was some tiny abnormality in one of the testicles of the ancestor of the person who is now observed, the descendant of that ancestor may not be exactly the same as without this tiny change, thus causing this person's descendants to be slightly more different each generation, the end result being that the person who does the event that we're observing doesn't do it quite the same, if at all.
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