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Re: Choice and "Randomness" as IllusionsDanny Yee (danny@STAFF.CS.SU.OZ.AU)Fri, 27 May 1994 13:42:06 +1000
> It is perhaps unfortunate that > "determine" has a double meaning, one referring to our ability to > know, another referring to the relations between > phenomena regardless of our ability to know. So I end with this: > Determinacy is relaxed not a bit by our inability to determine. Well you are in good company here, as this was the position taken by Einstein. However the majority of modern physicists accept the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, under which qm indeterminacy is fundamental and not just a product of human limitations. As I said in my last message, I don't think this is at all relevant to anthropology, but I'm not convinced "determinism" is a useful concept at that level either. However I do agree with Bob Graber that we (= anthropologists) are still in the business of studying causal relationships. I will bow before the unknown, but not before the unknowable. Just because something is random or nondeterministic does not mean it is unknowable, as anyone who has studied statistical mechanics will know. (And there is a whole area of theoretical computer science devoted to studying non-deterministic automata!) In other words, nondeterministic != unknowable. Danny Yee. P.S. I've done it again; John O'Brien and Bob Graber were happily arguing away and now I've gone and stepped into the middle. P.P.S. "!=" means "not equal to" and is C programming semantics.
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