orthonormal comments on Open Thread: February 2010 - Less Wrong

1 Post author: wedrifid 01 February 2010 06:09AM

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Comment author: Alicorn 13 February 2010 05:29:42PM 1 point [-]

I'm sufficiently uninformed on how quantum mechanics would interact with determinism that so far I've been operating under the assumption that it doesn't. Maybe someone here can enlighten me? Does the behavior of things-that-behave-quantumly typically affect macro-level events, or is this restricted to when you look at them and record experimental data as a direct causal result of the behavior? Is there some way to prove that quantum events are random, as opposed to caused deterministically by something we just haven't found? (I'm not sure even in principle how you could prove that something is random. It'd be proving the negative on the existence of causation for a possibly-hidden cause.)

Comment author: orthonormal 13 February 2010 08:02:59PM *  2 points [-]

Does the behavior of things-that-behave-quantumly typically affect macro-level events, or is this restricted to when you look at them and record experimental data as a direct causal result of the behavior?

Yes; since many important macroscopic events (e.g. weather, we're quite sure) are extremely sensitive to initial conditions, two Everett branches that differ only by a single small quantum event can quickly diverge in macroscopic behavior.