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Originally Posted by Jetlack
I dont know, but I'll take a stab at it: What if infinties are compulsory for a universe to be truly open-ended and non-deterministic?
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That's an interesting conundrum. Normally, the concept of determinism is associated with infinitely precise information-- say, a location known to an infinite number of decimal places (otherwise, indeterminacy creeps in exponentially over time). But perhaps an infinite amount of information would also lead to indeterminacy, because it would require a higher order of infinity to process that information in an exact way so as to propagate all the interactions forward in time. Either way, it would seem that perfect determinacy is a physical impossibility, which frankly doesn't surprise me in the least-- it was always just in our minds.
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It just seems that maybe the universe would not be as complex, dynamic and creative without infinite values. In a weird way infinity is like an automatic driver of creativity because nothing repeats exactly ever and ever.
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That was probably more of an issue in a steady-state universe. But in our dynamical universe, there is really no way to get repetition anyway, at least not in any finite volume, because the global conditions are changing.
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That interesting because as far as Im aware the classical macroscopic world is as non-determinstic as is the quantum.
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Yes, I would agree with that. Many would say that the macro world is ruled by classical physics, which is a deterministic theory, but it is still just a theory-- which means it is designed for a purpose. That the classical world is ruled by a deterministic theory does not mean it "really is" deterministic, that's the common mistake made in science that I see quite often (and many may tire of seeing me point out on this forum!).
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I know many dont agree but i think there is a correlation between the HUP at the quantum level, and unpredictability on the macroscopic scale due to unknowable initial conditions. The key factor in both physical laws or principles is exactly the same; it being that total certainty is not possible.
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I think the difference that people point to is that the HUP encodes an uncertainty that is inherent, built right into the laws, whereas classical uncertainties (like sensitivity to initial conditions) are not independent of the precision of the information you are working with. In principle, you can imagine that classical information asymptotically approaches information that is perfectly precise, whereas you can't even imagine it with the HUP. But the key word there is "imagine"-- what we can imagine, and what we can actually test with experiment, are two very different things. The fact that classical thinking ran into a stumbling block, the HUP, is perfectly natural-- if it hadn't been the HUP, it might well have been something else. So it goes with imagination.
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To me GR is covering completely different part of nature's behaviour. I see qm as way more fundamental on the question of determinism/non-determinism than GR but that is just my personal speculation.
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Yes, that is definitely the prevailing view, though
DrRocket pointed out the dissenting view of Penrose.