Exploring Uncertainty: Insights from 'Past Uncertainty in a Current Thread' Book

[Naty1]

In a current thread the book
http://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/p...ney/QBhome.htm

is recommended...
I skimmed the first chapter and like the explanation and style...I'm printing and reading more carefully now...
but I already have a "burning" question (perhaps 2 ) maybe someone can address.

The first sentence of the book is this:

The future is always uncertain.

How do we know that's ALWAYS true??
(Ever since I found out Einstein discovered time and distance are NOT fixed I'm suspicious of all obvious assumptions...)

Is the past absolutely certain?? How do we know that??

 

[alxm]

The first sentence of the book is just a lead into a paragraph which relates your ordinary, every-day perception of life. It's obviously not intended as an absolute statement of some eternal physical truth.

Being skeptical isn't the same as being excessively literal in your reading.
Oh, and here's a http://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/people/JamesBinney/QBhome.htm" .

 

[Naty1]

alxm...thanks, but unhelpful.

I finally found a brief reference I was seeking: I had hoped, here, to possibly receive some interpretations of Fay Dowker/James Hartle/Murray Gell Mann's "consistent histories formulation" of quantum cosmology, a formulation based on decoherence...or even better, some more recent work of others or updates...

Different histories apparently CAN be elicited via different inquiries...The reference dates to a Quantum Gravity conference, Durham England, 1995...and I have not seen anything else since...It's a brief passage in Lee Smolin's THREE ROADS TO QUANTUM GRAVITY, pAGE 43-45, 2001...

and I also wondered if any subsequent quantum theories have looked forward instead of backward...

 

[AUMathTutor]

"The future is always uncertain."

That sentence is obviously false. Assume it were true. Then you would be certain that it is not possible to be certain about the future. However, you would also have to acknowledge that you would find yourself in the same situation later, with absolute certainty (truths are always true). Ergo, you are certain about some situation in the future. This contradicts the assumption that it is impossible to be certain about the future, ergo, it is not the case that it is impossible to be certain about some situations in the future. One can therefore say that the future is sometimes certain.

Seriously, though, that sentence isn't meant to be technically correct, it's just a little bit of showboating to get your interest up.

 

[Naty1]

There is a short explanation of consistent histories in Wikipedia at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistent_histories

excerpts:

In quantum mechanics, the consistent histories approach is intended to give a modern interpretation of quantum mechanics, generalising the conventional Copenhagen interpretation and providing a natural interpretation of quantum cosmology...

The interpretation based on consistent histories is used in combination with the insights about quantum decoherence. Quantum decoherence implies that only special choices of histories are consistent, and it allows a quantitative calculation of the boundary between the classical domain and the quantum domain...

The proponents of this modern interpretation, such as Murray Gell-Mann, James Hartle, Roland Omnès and Robert B. Griffiths argue that their interpretation clarifies the fundamental disadvantages of the old Copenhagen interpretation, and can be used as a complete interpretational framework for quantum mechanics.

Better than nothing, but hardly inspirational! And nothing about the future, so that might imply there is not much theory in that direction ...