What I had in mind was say there are two possible chemical reactions, which are very close to one another. The randomness of the smaller units, which are probabilistic, could cause things to go one way instead of the other.



This is just based on ignorance. This isn't reality. This is the type of thing I've been pointing out in relation to free will. Is it reality that we have more than one option available? Or is this just ignorance?



Right, and these individual interactions could have an impact on other things; the butterfly effect, making the larger system also probabilistic.



Yes, this is what I was saying originally. But when you asked me the question, the other possibility came to mind, which is that there could be two possible reactions, very close to one another, and the underlying probabilistic nature of the smaller systems could impact the larger one.

I agree that what you are saying would be the general case, and, again, this was my point. Although the activities of the individuals are not known, one can still predict the behavior of the larger system. This principle also applies socially. One can predict, within certain ranges, how society as a whole will act (e.g., how many suicides there will be) without knowing what individual people will do.

But, again, your question made me think of the other possibility I mentioned.

The probabilistic effects of Schrodinger's psi function manifest themselves only during IDENTICAL conditions. If they are just "very close" then the statistical effects are due to ignorance, not the HUP.

You have two systems, A and B. A is probabilistic, B (without respect to A) isn't, but A impacts B. That makes B probabilistic too.

Not really. Have you ever done the double-slit experiment with electrons? If you do the math, you will find that there are spots where the probability is zero. The exact location where each individual electron will land is unknown because of its probabilistic nature, but the aggregate is extremely predictable.

Even though the sun is made up of particles that act probabilistically under certain conditions, no physicist will say that the sun's behavior is probabilistic. The uncertainty in the sun's position and momentum as measured by our finest instruments is huge compared to Planck's constant. IOW, the HUP plays no role in the sun's overall behavior.

If you do the math, you will find the same thing for a baseball, a golf ball, a ball bearing, pinhead, a grain of sand, a scale from a butterfly's wing. Many people do not understand the scales at which the HUP comes into play. To say that the probabilistic nature of subatomic particles makes such macro objects probabilistic in their behavior is as misguided as saying that relativistic effects must be accounted for when sending spaceships to the moon.

If you're talking about Chaos Theory, that is NOT probabilistic in the sense that Quantum Mechanics is. It is probabilistic only in that we don't know all the factors that go into the butterfly's flapping causes weather changes elsewhere. If we knew all the factors, there would be no guess work.

The bottom line of Chaos Theory is not that we cannot make predictions because of the probabilistic nature of things, but that tiny changes in initial conditions can have huge effects in the results.


Societal behavior, like suicides, cannot be predicted like electron interference patterns. Unlike electrons going through a double slit, people do not do things just because "that's what they did." There are factors such as stress, emotional stability, etc. Suicide rates fluctuate, not because of probability, but because of shifting factors. The prediction of such rates is based on historical data, not probabilistic effects.

But the application of the probabilistic effects found in subatomic physics to social or moral situations is problematic. Electrons have no free will, and just act probabilistically because of the nature of some of their properties. In particular, when they are represented in the mathematical language of waves, they behave as you would expect waves to behave.

To apply that to humans removes our free will. What you are saying is tantamount to saying that we don't really make choices, but simply make choices based on indeterminate functions of our mind. In short, free will is an illusion.

In any case, the application of the probabilistic effects of quantum mechanics to human behavior has no basis in science. Schrodinger's equation has not been solved for any system much more complicated than a hydrogen atom - one proton, one electron. Beyond that, we don't have the math to solve it. In fact, we don't even have the math to solve the gravitational interaction between three bodies; we are relegated to approximating such interactions by the brute force of computer simulations. Therefore, apart from the fact that these quantum mechanical effects are manifest only in systems of very, very, very small momentum, to say that they significantly impact our moral decisions is pure conjecture.

But I will add that I have read a book by a psychologist, whose skills at physics as a child was commended by Feynman, who invoked QM's statistical nature in discussing God's miracles. He said that there is a non-zero probability of the sun disappearing, and that God's miracles recorded in the Bible have a higher probability of happening. Basically, the framework of current physics can accommodate God's miracles.

I didn't say this. I said:



You say, "not really," but the logic above is sound. You could argue "this would never really happen, as there are no such systems" but the logic is sound.



Not necessarily. Take the stock market, for example. Say it's in a chaotic state, so that a small fluctuation in one direction or another would cause it to react strongly in one of two different directions. Say Warren Buffet makes a decision based on flipping a coin, or the Fed, some entity which has a great deal of effect on the Market. That random event could lead to a great change in the behavior of the Market. Many more subtle illustrations of this point could be made. It's not simply a matter of knowing all the data.

Here's another example:



Before Lorenz's discovery, one of the hopes of using computers was to be able to definitively predict the weather. The idea was with enough data points, and computing power, the weather could be predicted. But the problem turned out to be that very small changes could wind up causing drastic effects. So a small storm in Africa either starts or it doesn't, which small storm is based on other smaller effects, which leads to a hurricane either being born or not.



These initial conditions can be impacted by random events.



No, I wasn't arguing this. I was just making an analogy. The analogy was in relation to thinking that a system acts in a certain way (e.g. probabilistically instead of deterministically) because of a lack of knowledge (ignorance). So someone might think a certain system is probabilistic when it really isn't (they didn't have enough knowledge to rightly judge all the relevant factors). Similarly one might think they have free will (meaning they have more than one option available to them) when they really don't (they don't know the future is single-threaded, so that there future action is already known/determined).

No, the logic is not sound. The error is called the "Fallacy of Composition."

Example: The integers 1 and 3 are odd, therefore, combining them would form an odd result.

And it is true that there are no such systems, because the unpredictable nature of the individuals is negated when taken as an aggregate - the aggregate is extremely predictable.

Another example: The atoms that compose the Statue of Liberty are moving at high velocity, therefore, the Statue of Liberty is moving at high velocity.

If system A is random, and system B is impacted by A, then one cannot definitely state what the final result will be, even though one could do so in considering B by itself. This is because the result of A impacts the initial conditions of B.




I mentioned this possibility in discussing the prediction of the number of suicides. However, there are other possible scenarios, such as the one I gave where Buffet or the Fed flips a coin to make a decision which has a wide impact on the behavior of others.

The stock market is a good example that aggregate behavior is not necessarily predictable.

First, the logic is still not sound. There's even an official name for the fallacy.

Second, what you describe is very different from the QM we have been discussing. In fact, it is the opposite. QM is very predictable, in spite of the unpredictability in the behavior of individual particles. That is one of the strange features of QM.

Third, you are confusing Chaos Theory - unpredictability based on ignorance - with Quantum Theory - unpredictability based on inherent properties of nature.


The coin flip is deterministic. If we had the initial position and momentum of the coin, we could calculate how it would land.

The stock market's unpredictable behavior, in contrast to QM, is so in spite of the predictable behavior of individuals. Even if you know how person A will act, that tells you nothing about the market as a whole. So, it is the opposite of QM. And, it looks unpredictable only because of ignorance. If you knew what everyone would do, you would know how the market will behave.

In fact, I don't think you can come up with any macro object that is unpredictable in a way that comes from Quantum Theory. Even computers, which rely on the tunneling behavior of electrons, are very predictable.

I asked you a specific question, which you didn't answer, which is how you got from the argument I presented to your analogy.

I'm having difficulty understanding why you are disputing what I said:



If System A has to outputs, 1 and 2, which occur randomly at some probability p and q, and the output of system A sets the initial conditions of system B, then the probability of the outcomes of system B are dependent upon the outcome of system A. Since the outcome of system A is probabilistic, the initial condition of system B is probabilistic.



I'm discussing probabilistic systems, and how one system can impact another.



Why do you think so? You're stating things without giving any reasons for the statements.

Chaos theory has to do with chaotic situations, where a small change in one variable can lead to great changes in effect. If the variable that changes slightly is set by, or impacted by, a probabilistic event, then it is easy to see that great changes can result from probabilistic events. This is all I'm saying here. I'm not confusing chaos theory with quantum theory. I didn't reference quantum theory in what I was saying. Quantum theory is simply an example of a probabilistic theory.



This is a moot point. Substitute that for the location of a subatomic particle. Buffet makes a decision base on this instead.



If the person is Buffet, it does tell you something about the Market as a whole.

If a person buys 5,000,000 shares of a stock, that will tell you something about the behavior of the market as a whole (buying enough shares of a stock can, of itself, cause the price to go up).



Not if the decisions made which have impacts are random (as in the example of the coin flip, or subatomic particle, if you prefer).



If what some people do is random, that's not knowable.



I'm not making an argument based on Quantum Theory!

There are different ways of looking at things. One is in a deterministic way, which Calvinists favor. If you've read Jonathon Edwards work "Freedom of the Will," he goes into the deterministic idea in great detail, expressing the thought that everything is determined.

Another way of looking at things is that not everything is determined, that there are things which are random and spontaneous, even for God. I presented Quantum Mechanics simply as an example of this. Assuming QM is true, then even if you asked God what a certain particle would do, He would answer, "There's a certain percent change it will do X, a certain percent chance it will do Y" and so forth. That is, even God would describe the motion of the particle probabilistically.

I was explaining how larger systems can also be probabilistic. It is not necessarily the case that if you had enough data that you could determine exactly what would happen. For example, if the Fed chose to make a decision to buy or sell based on a random event, even if it were known precisely what every individual would do, you *still* wouldn't know for sure what the Market would do; you'd have to define the result probabilistically.

When people's decisions come into play, there are additional factors which can bring spontaneity into play. It is not necessarily the case that if you knew a person's total history, and, say, the chemical composition of their brain, that you would know what decision they would make. Indeed, from Scripture, there is ample evidence that even God was not sure what decisions people would make.