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Do Subatomic Particles Have Free Will?
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Aug 16, 2008 02:20 PM
from the painting-fences-white-very-quickly dept.
from the painting-fences-white-very-quickly dept.
An anonymous reader sends in a Science News article that begins: "Human free will might seem like the squishiest of philosophical subjects, way beyond the realm of mathematical demonstration. But two highly regarded Princeton mathematicians, John Conway and Simon Kochen, claim to have proven that if humans have even the tiniest amount of free will, then atoms themselves must also behave unpredictably." Standard interpretations of quantum mechanics, of course, embrace unpredictability. But many physicists aren't comfortable with that, and are working to develop deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics. Conway and Kochen's proof argues that these efforts will be fruitless — unless one is willing to give up human free will, in a very strong sense. The article quotes Conway: "We can really prove that there's no algorithm, no way that the particle can give an answer that is unique and can be specified ahead of time. I'm still amazed that we can actually manage to prove that."
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If We Have Free Will, Then So Do Electrons 610 comments
snahgle writes "Mathematicians John Conway (inventor of the Game of Life) and Simon Kochen of Princeton University have proven that if human experimenters demonstrate 'free will' in choosing what measurements to take on a particle, then the axioms of quantum mechanics require that the free will property be available to the particles measured, or to the universe as a whole. Conway is giving a series of lectures on the 'Free Will Theorem' and its ramifications over the next month at Princeton. A followup article strengthening the theory (PDF) was published last month in Notices of the AMS." Update: 03/19 14:20 GMT by KD : jamie points out that we discussed this theorem last year, before the paper had been published.
Submission: Do subatomic particles have free will? by Anonymous Coward
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Uh, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
There's already considerable evidence that humans don't have free will, but that free will is (essentially) an illusion created by your brain.
So, no, particles do not have free will.
Re:Uh, what? (Score:5, Informative)
There's already considerable evidence that humans don't have free will, but that free will is (essentially) an illusion created by your brain.
So, no, particles do not have free will.
Let A be "Humans have free will." and let B be "Subatomic particles have free will.". Conway and Kochen says A->B. You assume ~A and draw the conclusion ~B. That's not justified. I'm sure there is a Wikipedia entry on this logical fallacy.
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:5, Informative)
This [wikipedia.org] is the fallacy you refer to.
Wikipedia is very, very good on mathematics and logic.
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:5, Funny)
This [wikipedia.org] is the fallacy you refer to.
Wikipedia is very, very good on mathematics and logic.
Just hold on a sec......
There.
Now it isn't. The mathematics & logic portion of wikipedia is now, however, a very very good authority on Rick Astley's greatest hits.
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
You assume ~A and draw the conclusion ~B. That's not justified.
One thing about logic is understanding when to use it.
You are correct that A->B does not imply ~A->~B.
When you have ~A you do not know anything about B, and cannot make a conclusion based on the model.
However, A->B was never ment to be a complete model of the possible relationships between conscious minds and conscious atoms. It describes only one relatinship. If we want to understand what ~A leads to, we need to look beyond A->B and at the world we're trying to model. And doing that, we see that if we have ~A (no free will) then there is no reason to suspect atoms with free will either.
So there is justification for extending the model and say that ~A->~B
So asuming atoms have not free will, since we don't, ~A from ~B, is a fair and valid conclusion. It's not a logical proof derived from A->B, but it was never claimed to be either.
The real error here was to use an incomplete model to say that a justified conclusion that was not part of the model was false.
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Furthermore we still have to define free will.
If an agent with free will is defined as an agent whose behavior is unpredictable then free will can exist. Sub-atomic particles CAN fall under that definition as having free will.
If an agent with free will is defined as an agent who is capable of changing its state through means which are impossible to predict and NOT-RANDOM then it will be impossible to determine whether or not sub-atomic particles or people have free will.
There is no evidence or suggestion that human decision making (moral, religious or otherwise) is anything other than the product of chemical reactions occuring in the brain. Eventually we'll be able to perfectly model the human brain and if it doesn't function then we'll be able to effectively determine that humans do not have free will and that the source of the unpredictability is chaos and happenstance not some super-natural decision making agent which transmits decisions to the meat. (Personally I would argue that alcohol and other physical decision impairing forces are proof that our brain and not some supernatural morality engine is the source of our decisions.)
There are three methods that I know of by which something can happen:
1) Deterministic
2) Random
3) Free Will
Number 2 and 3 are effectively impossible to discriminate between so even if a sub-atomic particle is demonstrated to be unpredictable it still doesn't make it free of will. However even the word "unpredictable" has to be carefully used because the weather is unpredictable and yet most people believe it is deterministic and not the hand of say... Thor.
Number 1 is impossible to prove as well. However counter examples where an agent can be forced into acting against its normal behavior is very strong evidence to support a definition of determinism.
And just to head off the obligatory nihlist: I can't prove that Jesus wasn't Budha's mother or that I'm not a delusional apple hanging from a tree in Iowa so please let's apply occum's razor to this matter before blurting out some nonsense like "but you can never know FOR SURE if a sub-atomic particle is random therefore it has free will."
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Eventually we'll be able to perfectly model the human brain and if it doesn't function then we'll be able to effectively determine that humans do not have free will and that the source of the unpredictability is chaos and happenstance not some super-natural decision making agent which transmits decisions to the meat.
Sorry posted too quick.
That should read: Eventually we'll be able to perfectly model the human brain and if it doesn't fail to function then we'll be able to effectively determine that humans do not have free will and that the source of the unpredictability is chaos and happenstance not some super-natural decision making agent which transmits decisions to the meat.
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
But what, then, is guiding us to believe we have free will? What part of the brain is seeing the illusion? Your theory still leaves a fairly large and important chunk unanswered, and I think that chunk of our consciousness easily leads back to the same department as free will.
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
But what, then, is guiding us to believe we have free will?
The fact that there are so many variables constantly changing as to construct the illusion of it.
That, and the desire to have some purpose - any purpose - to our behaviours.
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
The same over-active "agency detection" apparatus that tricks us into thinking that a moving shadow or a bolt of lightning is a god or spirit. We have a really poor (in the false-positive direction) agency detection apparatus, which I have seen explained (Gould? Sagan?) as: those who assumed that the moving shadow was out to get them, outlived those who assumed that it was just the wind in the trees (because sometimes it was a hungry agent). Until concepts such as tithing were invented, there was little survival penalty to seeing non-obvious agents were there were none.
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am aware 100% of the time that I exist. During the times I (allegedly) don't exist, I am not aware of them. I have never experienced something without being aware of it - the two states are synonyms.
But, I have been aware of many things that don't indicate an external reality. My own internal thoughts and emotions don't necessarily correspond to reality, my memories may or may not be accurate to varying degrees when checked against new experiences, plus there's dreams, delusions, and many other states where I have strong doubt the things I am aware of at that time match in any way with an objective external universe.
So, I believe in an external reality, but I simply must do so based on a lot less than 100% of my total awareness. If I thought the percentage was very small, I wouldn't believe that the rest of you are real enough to bother typing this, but if I set the percentage at or very close to 100%, I'd be assuming my dreams are real, my emotions are tools of reason, and railroad tracks really do get closer together in the distance!
Now 'freewill' seems to be real to me, but it acts in many cases in relation to things I also can't prove are real. I can't really prove to anyone else that I have 'real' emotions instead of just 'simulating them', I can't prove I was genuinely mistaken about something instead of pretending to be mistaken, etc. So, I can't use any of these to prove I have free will, since they themselves can also be doubted.
But, I've just shown that the idea of an external reality, and particularly one where processes of Chemistry and Physics imply there is no true free will possible, is itself subject to doubt. So the real reason we can doubt free will exists is that we can actually doubt just about everything. Now what really bugs me is you people who are swearing up and down there is no reason to doubt external reality, but doubting everything else for reasons that also apply to that external model, except you won't apply them to that, just everything else.
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
I already tend to believe humans don't have free will to begin with. We are governed by a set of rules, that while we might think we are free to take a drastically different action, there are further rules upon those rules which determine why we took that action.
Okay, so as an example... it's close to lunch time, and I haven't eaten all day. I have money, and I'm right outside a burger joint. Is it Free Will that I decide to go inside and buy some food? What if I watched a video on arterial plaque buildup the previous day and decide to try to find a salad instead? Is it Free Will, or was my logic governed by another set of rules that determined I would seek a healthier alternative? We might think our actions are determined by a thought process, but I've been philosophizing heavily as to how those thought processes got into place to begin with.
Solomon Chang
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd say that feeling if you felt that it was necessary to philosophize about it, then that itself would suggest that you do have free will.
Logic and free will are definitely not mutually exclusive. I'd go as far to say that curiosity and sentience may require free will, and logic/philosophical discord are a means (or rather, one of the only appropriate means) to satisfying that curiosity. Otherwise, we're all just automatons [wikipedia.org].
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:5, Funny)
Well that's their choice.
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Re:Uh, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe that we have free will, *and* that the universe is completely deterministic. The two concepts are orthgonal. One cannot have "illusion of free will" any more than one can have "illusion of pain". If I believe that I'm in pain, than I necessarily am in pain, even if the pain comes from e.g. a limb that no longer exists - doesn't matter: if it hurts, it hurts.
Similarly, if I consciously decide my next actions, then I necessarily have free will, regardless of whether the universe is pre-determined. You might argue that in a deterministic universe all consciousness is an illusion - but that's an unreawrding path to travel.
In any case, arguing "if I have free will, then the universe is not deterministic" is not logical - the assumption that "determinism is incompatible with free will" has been argued by philosophers for centuries, without conclusion. Feel free to believe that - many do - but don't state it as a fact.
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!news (Score:5, Informative)
How about a link to the actual article? (Score:5, Informative)
http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.3286
This is exactly what free will boils down to.. (Score:4, Insightful)
...if you are willing (and able) to scientifically analyse what human will (free or otherwise) really is, and what are the boundaries of its freedom. If we hadn't have quantum mechanical phenomena, there would be no room for free will whatsoever, and we'd be all living a predetermined life.
When I try to discuss this topic with my friends, they are either not scientifically minded enough to follow through, or just can't accept the fact that, as physical beings, we would be absolutely determined in our behaviour and actions. And then, there's the concept of "soul" that, so far, has only helped to muddy the waters of reasoning in this topic. I'd really like to see a way that the concept of "soul" could be included in the discussion of free will in a physical world, I just don't know of any scientifically minded philosopher who had done it.
Re:This is exactly what free will boils down to.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Are particles unpredictable because they have free will, or are they unpredictable because we don't have the ability to understand what drives them?
At one point objects fell from the sky because it was God's will.
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I was destine to post this! (Score:4, Funny)
It's turtles all the way down (Score:5, Interesting)
If they indeed succeed, some other folks will start to search for underlying nondeterministic model, and so on...
Free Will != Unpredictability (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Free Will != Unpredictability (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The funny thing is, though - and I didn't see it mentioned explicitly - that not even a deterministic universe is actually predictable.
As you say, with "enough information" you could calculate any outcome, but that information is actually infinite, and physically impossible to obtain for several different reasons, and even if you had it, it would be impossible to process.
Re:Free Will != Unpredictability (Score:4, Interesting)
That's kind of why I said "not even a deterministic universe is actually predictable", isn't it?
So here's the question, then: How do you differentiate between actual free will, and unpredictable determinism?
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Re:Free Will != Unpredictability (Score:4, Funny)
I _knew_ you were going to ask that question.
You are just so predictable.
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Re:Free Will != Unpredictability (Score:4, Insightful)
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depends on what you mean by people (Score:3, Interesting)
If you mean "guy on the street who just thought about this five minutes ago", probably, but free will has been a serious topic of philosophical discussion for centuries now. As you might expect, various people have written various things on the subject that you might not think of in a college-dorm philosophy session, which seems to be the extent of philosophical thinking the scientists who are the subject of this article have done.
In particular, a major position on the subject, held by both philosophers (fr
Yes, it does. (Score:4, Informative)
I can be completely predictable and still be acting freely.
No, you can't. If I can know right now every action you are going to take, from now until you die (ignoring the edge case where you die instantly), then you are not exercising free will. Why? Because your actions in the future are being completely determined by the state of things right now.
That's what distinguishes determinism from free will.
Conversely, if my actions are random, how can I be said to have any control over them?
Not "random", but "unpredictable". There's a *huge* difference.
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Wide Interpretation of Freewill is at fault (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about a definition of Free Will for a while. Then answer this question:
If an exact copy of you were made (absolutely exact, right down to the quantum state of every particle); do you believe that given the exact same environment (a twinned universe?) your doppleganger would ever do anything different than yourself?
If you believe that you would not act, and think exactly the same then you believe Free Will is beyond quantum mechanics; otherwise Free Will is just the synergistic response to a complex organism that has the capability to think of itself.
Re:Wide Interpretation of Freewill is at fault (Score:5, Informative)
If you believe that you would not act, and think exactly the same then you believe Free Will is beyond quantum mechanics; otherwise Free Will is just the synergistic response to a complex organism that has the capability to think of itself.
Actually, no. Ignoring the no cloning theorem [wikipedia.org] for a moment, if two particles are in the exact same quantum state, then they can collapse to two different values. This is precisely the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics.
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Re:Wide Interpretation of Freewill is at fault (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up. Finally someone who knows what they are talking about.
The buzzword "free will" is bringing out the idiots with no science education. This discussion simplifies to one thing - if, given all the requisite variables in a system, one can predict the next infinite states of that system, that system is deterministic. Id est, if, ignoring the cloning theorem and other QM restraints, one knew the exact state of every particle in the human body and one could predict the next infinite states of that system (the body), then that system would be deterministic (have no "free will"). If, on the other hand, the human body (more precisely, the mind) could be proven to have a finite number of predictable states, then the underlying physical systems must therefore also have a finite number of predictable states (be unpredictable).
Now, QM predicts that subatomic particles are unpredictable. Technically, that would make our minds unpredictable HOWEVER - unpredictable is defined precisely as being unable to predict an infinite number of states in the system. A finite (even large) number may still be possible. This would the generalization of a large number of unpredictable subsystems in the system used to approximate the future states. As we see with Newtonian physics, this method can be fairly accurate.
The only way that humans could be proven to be completely predictable would be to disprove the tenets of quantum mechanics. Until then, humans have "free will."
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"If an exact copy of you were made (absolutely exact, right down to the quantum state of every particle); do you believe that given the exact same environment (a twinned universe?) your doppleganger would ever do anything different than yourself?"
The copy would act a LOT like the original, but would diverge eventually, because it cannot remain in the same state after being copied: both copies can't be in the same place so they will be affected differently by their environment.
The whole free-will debate is m
Simple answer (Score:3, Insightful)
You have basically three choices here:
-Humans/animals/subatomic particles have free will somehow; as in, they can make arbitrary decisions and cause action that is unpredictable by any model of physics.
-Humans et al. do not have free will and their actions are dictated by laws of physics; said laws are natural and immutable and will lead to a predictable model of the universe.
-Humans et al. do not have free will and their actions are dictated by the whims of a god or other conscious entity. This scenario, much like creation theories, really just moves the determination of free will to another actor: If we are merely cogs in god's plan, does god have free will? This scenario, even if true, would not provide us with any useful information.
As an atheist I cannot fathom option 3. Of the remaining scenarios, the only one I can rationally support is number two (no free will thanks to physics). As it hurts my ego to claim that I have no free will, I believe that the concept of free will ought to be divided into distinct categories: mathematically-derived actions of matter and energy and sentient actions (which would not cover particles unless they were shown to be conscious). I think they ought to be treated as separate fields.
Or maybe individuals have free will, but the species does not. If you can predict birthrate, accident rate, crime rate, etc with a high degree of accuracy, is free will threatened? If you can predict with great accuracy that 1.2% of RV owners will experience a collision while driving their RV, do RV owners still retain free will?
I need more caffeine.
-b
What do we mean by FREE WILL here? (Score:5, Interesting)
The original poster writes that this hypothesis is a threat to "human free will, in a very strong sense". I'm not sure what he means by a very strong sense, but it becomes clear after doing a little research that none of these people are talking about human free will in the sense that most people perceive it.
The real argument here is about whether the future is fixed. If the universe is purely mechanistic, then no agency -- human or otherwise -- can change the course of future events. But what does that mean for a human being?
Not much, it turns out. So you can't change the future, but thanks to the laws of thermodynamics you don't know what the future is going to be like anyhow. There's still nothing to prevent you from shaping (as opposed to changing) the future with your decisions.
But wait! Aren't those decisions also pre-determined? In a strictly physical sense, yes, they are. But again, what does that mean for us? Not much. A human being is a vastly complex and chaotic system interacting with a vastly complex and chaotic environment. We're driven by chaos theory and the laws of thermodynamics, not by quantum randomness. (Would you really want to be guided by quantum randomness? I mean seriously. . . What kind of "free will" would you get out of that?)
Any argument against free will -- in the way that most ordinary people regard it -- is easily brushed aside. For thousands of years we've been designing and creating things, making plans and then carrying them out. That's free will. To argue against it is like trying to prove that black is white (and then getting yourself killed at the next zebra crossing).
Re:What do we mean by FREE WILL here? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:What do we mean by FREE WILL here? (Score:5, Funny)
(and then getting yourself killed at the next zebra crossing)
You know, for years I thought Douglas Adams was talking about actual animals when he wrote that. Then, not so long ago, I stumbled upon the wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org] about the term for what I always called a "crosswalk".
I think my version was funnier.
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Randomness and unpredictability (Score:5, Insightful)
All things "quantum" are portrayed as bizarre, but they aren't; they aren't even that difficult to understand, if presented properly. There's just a whole lot of bad "information" out there.
Bohm's idea has never been debunked, and is perfectly logical. Remember, the movement of the planets was also once "unpredictable", and then "mostly predictable but with errors" before we understood the hidden variables. Just because something is currently unpredictable, doesn't make it random.
Anyway.
There are a number of statements in this article that lead me to believe that either: A) Conway and Kochen are loony, or B) crappy "science" journalism strikes again. Hopefully it's the latter and something was just lost in the translation from actual-science to journalism-ese. However, the fact that the two of them have been hawking this idea for four years tends toward A.
Repeated throughout the article is the idea that the particle CHOOSES its spin. This is an insane idea. The whole presentation is nuts. Do subatomic particles have free will? What? Does a glass of water have free will? Can you define free will first so that a meaningful discussion can follow?
This article portrays it as a new choice, either determinism or free will. It has always been one or the other, they're mutually exclusive (for certain values of "free will").
But anyway.
WTF. Again with the lunacy. You don't have to send Alice to Mars to prevent information passing between them. First of all, information isn't going to pass between them, that's not what entangled particles are about (despite massive popular [but factually wrong] ideas to the contrary). Second of all, putting Alice on the other side of Earth gets her out of Bob's immediate light cone.
ANYWAY.
The point of the thought experiment is to "prove" that there's no way to predict the axis of spin of the particle, even with an identically entangled particle, if you "poke" it differently, because no perfect pre-poke state exists.
Because "poking" it changes its spin. NO SHIT. You change the outcome by measuring it. Oh my science! Alert the media! So their idea is that the spin is not predetermined, and therefore determinism is false and we have "free will". Except it STILL doesn't disprove Bohm's conjecture (see start of rant) that there are unknown rules in play.
So, their idea basically adds nothing to the debate. It "proves" nothing. It tells us nothing. Why is this on /.?
This article is dumb. I'm dumber for having read it. I award the author no points, and may science have mercy on his inevitably destined animating force.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I should add that when it comes to theoritical physics and expoloration, we should not limit ourselves strictly to materialistic or atheistic viewpoints, but also should explore possibilities that there is a metaphysical components to something. So if we have theories which point to the possibility of a metaphysical component, these should not be thrown out because they conflict with someones atheistic viewpoint. Until we have a clear answer and something that is provable with emperical evidence, we really
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I am a little bit concerned, that scientists, due to their philosophical bent, might actually try ignore evidence that does not fit into the atheist viewpoints.
Yeah, it's terrible when respectable professional scientists won't accept the possibility of unprovable supernatural beings as an axiom for their research papers.
Foolishness (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, it's terrible when respectable professional scientists won't accept the possibility of unprovable supernatural beings as an axiom for their research papers.
Only evangelizing atheists and certain 17th-century clerics think that a scientist who believes in a supreme being will somehow have to resort to "angels pushing planets" kind of proof.
Newton, Bayes, and many other famous scientists were believers and that did not stop them from applying scientific methods. And many never-heard-of-them scientists today also believe as well, but you'll see no footnotes in their papers referencing this.
You make the basic mistake of assuming that those who stand inside of mainstream science and don't have Bible-referencing footnotes, have no faith. Not very scientific or rigorous. (Or correct.)
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Re:Science and religions/atheism should not mix (Score:4, Insightful)
He said evidence. If there is evidence of such beings (hypothetical), it would be wrong of scientists to ignore it just because they're atheist, right?
If there is such evidence, it wouldn't be supernatural, and hence scientists' religious beliefs (or lack thereof) would be irrelevant.
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No: Free will + statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly how quantum mechanics work. Each particle has a probability distribution for what it will do so that, at the large scale because of the huge numbers involved we know that roughly 40% will do X, 20% will do Y and 40% will do Z.
While I don't know for certain that Asimov based psycho-history on QM I've often suspected as much. As a PhD chemist he should have had a reasonably good understanding of QM at least.
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Re:No: Free will + statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
The "average behavior of crowds is deterministic" thing doesn't really work. The sum or average of a set of random variables is also a random variable.
There is a well known result in probability theory called the central limit theorem that says that if you add up enough independent, identically-distributed random variables together you get a normal distribution (i.e. bell curve). Lots of people try to apply this to economics (or in Asimov's case, history), but it doesn't work in practice. Individual actions are not independent or identically distributed. People's actions are correlated to other people's actions. Some people have vastly more influence on the aggregate outcome than others.
So the central limit theorem can't be applied to aggregate behavior. Instead of getting a nice well behaved normal distribution, you'll end up with a distribution that's messy, unpredictable, and confusing, which is fitting, since that's what we humans are.
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