ivan said:
But I'm just curious what some of the metaphysical thoughts are about this.
Doing the dice analogy I personally like to think of it like this in the QM case:
Your initial information and choice of questions/measurements, allows you to predict your dice which contains the probabilities for each possible answer/outcome.
So in QM, the evolution of the dice is deterministic, but each time you USE the dice, throw it, and collect the outcome, the your information is changed and the dice is remodelled. So one can say that the dice is "recalibrated" each time you use it.
So,
the answer you get from QM is a dice! For you to throw. Ie. it gives you some odds, as a guide for placing bets.
This is consistent with the different that classical mechanics deals with what nature is. Quantum mechanics deals with what we can say about nature. (Bohr's way of putting it)
Thus, the fact that the answer beeing a dice, makes perfect sense.
The irony I think Mentz was referring to is that the predicting to is that, it is natural to try to apply the same trick again, and question wether we instead of asking what the dice is, we could ask what we could say about our dice? Then the "irony" is that QM says that the dice evolves deterministically and is exactly known.
The problem is that the deterministic rule that determines the dice, are not acquired. They are pulled/postulated. And indeed they have been successful, but this treatment is IMO not in like with the humble ideal of Bohr, if you apply them to the rules of reasoning as well. What can we SAY about the rules of reasoning? And this leads possible to the question of wether it's a difference what I can say, or what anyone can say? IE. does the information capacity of the observer matter?
So what's the value of making upp odds, for bet placing? Obviously it's of high value for your survival, as investing your acquired resources randomly (without intelligent rating) may mean death. So it's a trait to develop a good, fit machinery to assist making choices. Incidently this is also how the human brain seems to work, before making a decision the brain evaluates a probability for each option. Note that it's irrelevant wether the probability is RIGHT. Because that tuning is the task of the learning. Insuccessful choices are fed back to the system, and your probability generator is slowly learning.
Of course in a way the rules of QM ARE acquired, in the sense of scientific progress, but this progress perhaps isn't as systematic and formal as is we've made the "measurement process" in QM. THIS is to me the "irony" :)
And I personally suspect this irony will persist until we have a more full version of QM, including gravity. Until then we may have to live with the confusion and the sea if interpretations.
/Fredrik