Ken,

"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!)."

Yes this is something that also confuses me. For instance why is it called "deterministic chaos"? I've debated this point with people on the BAUT forums; that while the individual systems in an "idealised" environment could be coined as determinstic; the real world with an open ended dymanic consisting of unknowable conditions, influences or factors should not be called Determinstic. If the system as a whole is inherently unpredictable then calling it Determinstic just seems ..well fraudulent actually.

Going out on a limb here; this charade over so-called Determinsim has seriously dented my belief in the purity of scientific endeavour. That may sound lame but i was genuinely shocked that some scientists still cling to this mantra when all the obervationsal evidence points to the opposite conclusion, at least in practice.

The part that really gets me is that unless a non-science type person does a lot of digging, a lot of questioning, and a lot of logical thinking on their own, they would be left in their state of ignorance and would take for granted that often repeated lie about the universe being Determinstic.

Maybe im too senstive to initial conditions :-)

"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."

I think the classical world ran into the non-determinstic signals from nature long before qm was developed. From what Ive read about non-linear equations is that they are simply better and better approximations but there is never an absolutely precise solution or answer.

Or for instance the N body problem which i believe was known ever since some time after Newton. Why is it that we still cant solve the N body problem precisely? Its dealing with a relatiuvely simple problem of 3 or more objects influencing eachothers motion. If we can't solve that to a precise exact determination then its rather dubious and hubristic - might i add - to claim the whole universe is Determinstic. Talk about trying to run before one can even crawl :-)