Questions tagged [determinism]
Use this tag for questions related to the concept of determinism, the idea that all events in the universe can be predicted from some set of initial conditions.
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Can a spinning coin at low altitude lose its randomness when colliding with a flat surface?
I’m exploring a classical mechanics question about how physical constraints might remove randomness from a system.
Consider a coin dropped from a very low altitude directly above a perfectly flat ...
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If quantum predictions are fundamentally probabilistic, why are other laws of physics able to make deterministic predictions? [closed]
As I understand quantum mechanics, it makes predictions that are fundamentally probabilistic. For example, you could have a state where the atom is measured with 30% probability to be spin up and 70% ...
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Does an electron have an indeterminate time like its position before measurement?
Consider the case of quantum entity :
If electron is present in region of high curvature of spacetime geometry
Wavefunction of electron is spread over large region such that difference in time ...
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Does Heisenberg uncertainty principle and chaos theory create indeterminism? [duplicate]
I’ve been struggling to understand this and hoping for an answer from someone enlightened.
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states there is a trade off between how much we can know about position and ...
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Why is information lost over time in real physics, but not in a simulated "integer-only" physics?
In statistical mechanics, entropy tends to increase over time, which is often interpreted as a loss of information about the initial state of a system.
Imagine I create an artificial physics ...
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Can physical phenomenon be deterministic but non-computable/unsolvable? [closed]
Can physical phenomenon be deterministic but non-computable?
If we describe some physics deterministic problem with math, is it possible that this math is unsolvable/non-computable? (that mean for ...
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Does nature work exclusively on the cause-effect principle?
Does nature work exclusively on the principle of cause-effect or are there situations in which the principle is violated?
Is randomness in probabilistic process truly fundamental or just a reflection ...
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Would the repetition of measuring a qubit after time-traveling always have the same result?
I believe the main difference between determinism in classical mechanics and indeterminism in quantum mechanics is that in the former, if you repeat a measurement with exactly the same initial ...
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Singular solutions in Newtonian gravity for two particles
In Earman's Primer to Determinism, he writes:
For Newtonian gravitation, the equation of motion is
$$\mathrm{(III.3) \quad}m_k\ddot{r}_k = \sum_{j, j \neq k} Gm_jm_k (r_j - r_k)/r^3_{jk} \quad (r_{jk}...
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How can a superdeterministic universe deal with (classical) chaos? [closed]
I'm aware that "superdeterminism" is sometimes misinterpreted, so I just want to provide a bit of context about how I understand the term:
When I was first learning about how a "hidden ...
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What's the probability distribution of when the ball will fall from Norton's dome?
Suppose our world is completely described by Newtonian mechanics. All the materials are rigid and can be cut infinitesimally.
There exist scenarios where the future is intrinsically probabilistic. ...
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Why is a bijective phase flow not enough for reversibility?
In Hamiltonian mechanics, I know that the time evolution is bijective, and it also conserves phase space volume (Liouville’s theorem). What I dont fully understand is why the volume conservation is ...
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Question about Landau & Lifshitz mechanics
Question:
I am new to physics and trying to understand how scientific statements are typically interpreted in physics texts. Consider the following two examples from a text:
"It is found that ...
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Can more than one past state lead to the current state of the universe? [closed]
I am seeking to assess the philosophical consistency between modern physics and the Damascene theologian Ibn Taymiyya's theory of natural causation. Ibn Taymiyya seems to have endorsed the view that ...
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Microscopic level randomness [closed]
I have a fairly simple question but can't find any clear answer anywhere it seems.
Let's say you would isolate an unstable nucleus and just wait for it to decay. You would know of the decay by having ...
