Author: Sune Fischer
Date: 00:57:30 08/07/02
Go up one level in this thread
On August 06, 2002 at 21:09:20, José Carlos wrote: >>The theory has worked wonders for 70 years, passed all test, pridicted endless >>amounts of results (it has pridicted new particles, explained alpa and >>beta-radiation etc etc...), it's been one long success story from the very >>beginning, it's possibly the greatest achievement of the human race in the 20th >>century. > > General Relativity is more impressing to me. Hard to believe we live in a non >euclidean space... Not to me. General relativity is almost obvious once you realize the newtonian laws are inadequite. >>...but you don't believe it! >> >>-S. > > Don't get me wrong, I don't say it's bad. I'm not qualified to make such >statement. I only say I don't believe what the theory relies on, specially >non-determinism. It's the building block of quantum mechanichs, if you take that away there is nothing left. How will you describe the wavefunction for an electron _without_ this, and what do you put instead of the Scrõdinger equation? The whole thing collapses instantly. > There's no way to prove a theory, either right or wrong. A theory (in physics) >is just a mathematical model of the world. I don't care much for that argument. This is obviously wrong once you understand that a physical proof is different from a mathematical proof. If the apple falls to the ground _always_, then a we conclude there is a force of gravity - by measurement, by emperical data. How should one *prove* this otherwise? Is it a matter of religion whether or not gravity exists? No, it's physics and it is based on observations. >Using maths, we guess what's the >reason for events and predict how nature will behave. A theory is as good as >it's predictions are. So quantum mechanics is a good theory, no doubt. But: a) >it's incomplete (it fails about gravitation); The quantum theory is more or less complete and it doesn't fail without the gravity part IMO. Quantum theory doesn't describe _everything_ but in the areas where it does work it fits perfectly. >b) it needs strange (anti-natural) >statements (measure problem, non locality); Nature is strange, sorry if that is inconvinient to you ;) My pet theory is that laws of nature is infinitely complex, and that any attempt to look for pretty solutions is bound to fail. Natures was not made so that humans would find it simple or easy to understand, its *creator* had no such concerns, so why run around and expect it to be simple? >c) doesn't make perfect predictions >(you can't predict the behaviour of a single particle); It makes predictions that falls within the uncertainty principle, did you expect it to contradict itself? Youd _can_ calculate the probability for the presence of the particle, namely its wavefunction. >d) it's just another >model, we'll never know how the "real" (if such a thing exists) structure of the >universe is. I fear you could be right. We still need a theory to tell us the physics of a black hole singularity, for instance. Doesn't mean that the rest is wrong :) The problem lies in the difficulty of running experiments, we learn by observing, when that is impossible progress becomes hard. > Non determinism is, IMO, a contradiction itself. If the same cause doesn't >always yield the same effect (causality principle violation) any further >reasoning is void. Note that every reasoning _needs_ the causality principle to >make sense. Reasoning is going from a premise to a conclusion using inference >rules. Same premises -> same conclusions, A is true _because_ B is false, etc... I don't see a problem, you _can't_ make the same premises, you can never setup the same experiment twice at the quantum level so where is the problem? Do the lottery numbers come out the same every time, even when the experiment is the same over and over? > So non determinism as an inherent property of the universe is not acceptable >for me, unless we immediately conclude we can't conclude anything, not even this >conclusion! Einstein never 'converted' either, I think if you are not open minded you will fail in this area of science, the subatomic world is alien to us. The clues are in the experiments :) > This said, I have much respect for quantum theory and the brilliant scientists >who developed it (Heisemberg, Schroedinger, Bohr, Dirac, Pauli, De Broglie, >Fermi, ... even Planck and Einstein contributed!). > But I still believe we are nothing but deterministic machines :( Pop quiz: how do your alternative theory explain alpha-decay? -S. > José C.
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