Recent content by Darwin

Only because PeroK brought up deterministic, classical systems in post 15. "Leaving aside QM, we have classical chaos theory. Although theoretically deterministic, classical systems of sufficiently complexity (i.e. all but the simplest, stable systems) are so . . . ." Sorry that your unable to...

"People like me"? What are "people like me," and just what pigeon-hole do I fit into? I also find your "you assume wrongly" to be a baseless presumption. In any case. I regard SR and GR to be quite in tune with the classical mechanical world---my mistake if I've mislead you into thinking...

If the universe isn't deterministic on the classical mechanic scale then what is it? What governs its day-to-day operation? "It just does" is hardly persuasive. The randomness would only be an expression of our inability to lock down the causes and figure out the resultant event. It's like...

Thank you for your input.

You've evidently dropped a significant word here or added an unnecessary one because at it stands your sentence isn't making sense. If there isn't one then how does an event come into being? No problem with possibilities if they're meaningful to the issue, which isn't the case with...

And I think probabilities are just about everywhere, if one cares to put events into that format. What is the probability that I'll be in bed before 10 PM tonight? From past practices I put it at about 0.01%

Thank you for clearing this up.

Not sure what you have in mind by "The theory is deterministic," but the thing is, statistical theories, nice as they may be, don't tackle the functional "whys" of an event. And, other than the possibility of uncaused subatomic events, everything else in the universe is determined (has a cause)...

Dynamical systems that are expressed by chaos theory are more than theoretically deterministic, but actually deterministic, even those we commonly call random. And unpredictability has no bearing on the deterministic nature of an event. All unpredictability does is announce our inability to...

Thank you.

Aside from supposed uncaused atomic decay do you know of any other event in the universe that is uncaused (undetermined)? If so, please share.

While you say the cause of an atomic nucleus emitting an alpha particle is the tunneling effect, it's been my understanding that tunneling can only take place after the decay event. Am I wrong? If I am, then there must be some component within the tunneling effect that determines the "when" of...

And that's what I'm trying to ferret out. If what you say is true then radioactive decay is truly an event that has absolutely no cause. It could just as well never happen as happen. An unstable atomic nucleus may never lose energy by radiation. In fact, trillions upon trillions of unstable...

Yes I know, but its probability doesn't address its cause. What I'm looking for is the "why," not the likelihood of its appearance. Why does a decay event happen when it does and not at some other time?

I recognize that radioactive decay is a spontaneous process in which an unstable atomic nucleus breaks into smaller, more stable fragments, but exactly what is it that causes an atom to decay at a particular time rather than at some other time?