Do deterministic laws imply similtaneous motion and infinite velocities?

[SteveA]

I believe logic implies that entirely deterministic systems operate effectively instantaineously or with an equivalent infinitely fast velocity and that (at least, consciously experienced) time can't be entirely deterministic (with a belated thanks to Austin for sticking to his guns on the subject of non-determinism).

I've tried a few times to keep the reasoning behind this short and clear but failed and so I'll instead give a simple example and let you decide whether or not the logic makes sense.

If a (informationally closed) system is predetermined to evolve through a specific sequence of states, then this could be seen as a motion along a single line without divergences/branches.

Any interaction with any other system over time that would be capable of altering that linear sequence would, by definition, be impossible as now that capability to have the evolution of the initial system altered would mean that it was no longer predetermined to evolve according to that sequence, hence the evolution of multiple deterministic systems could be considered to exist as a parallel and independent evolution.

Any connection/relationship between them that possessed uncertainty/indeterminism would be constructed as some relative/time dependent comparison/observation made of/between them.

To give a quick example of this in terms of observable physical phenomenon, I'll use the (classical for me) example of dropping an apple.

If we drop an apple we can expect it to fall, hit the ground and hear a sound of it hitting the ground, but there are elements of uncertainty involved with a real apple and the specific manner in which it's released or the detailed mechanics of it falling, as well as the specific moment it hits the ground or the precise qualities of the sound heard etc. at future moments are not entirely determinable at present.

I'll skip getting into lots of detail for now, unless someone desires a discussion though the general idea is that deterministic systems are actually the equivalent of static/unchanging objects - non-determinism exists in time/change and that the coherent aspects of motion and physical laws appear most likely to arise from information limits of interaction/transformations upon otherwise static and unchanging objects.

[labelwench]

If we drop an apple we can expect it to fall, hit the ground and hear a sound of it hitting the ground, but there are elements of uncertainty involved with a real apple and the specific manner in which it's released or the detailed mechanics of it falling, as well as the specific moment it hits the ground or the precise qualities of the sound heard etc. at future moments are not entirely determinable at present.
Originally posted by SteveA

We may have expectations in regard to what will happen if we drop an apple, yet I agree that there are significant elements of uncertainty related to even such a simple experiment. Some are related to the properties of the apple, some to the mechanics of it's release, others to the medium through which it shall drop, the angle of impact etc.

There is far more uncertainty than certainty, as regards all of these observable processes we call change, at least in my opinion and experience. Though we often seek to replicate certain elements of our experiencing, because we are constantly inputting new sensory data and incorporating same into our framework of assessment and comprehension, I would suggest that all experience is unique to the object/person of the change involved.

As for my ability to debate the actual title of your thread, there appears to be far more simultaneous motion than we may have earlier surmised, and in regard to infinite velocities.....I haven't arrived there yet. Not certain of how one could satisfactorily 'prove' infinite.

[Graybeard]

All else being equal ... the motion of the apple when 'dropped' can be determined in advance provided the properties of the apple and (presumably) the earth are known. The apple doesn't drop exactly ... it is attracted to the earth ... and therefore the earth is attracted to the apple.

So tho the apple appears to fall towards the earth, the earth must also rise to meet the apple .... its just a lot bigger and its mass is much greater .. but nevertheless it moves towards the apple.

So while the parabolic motion of the event can be calculated, what cannot be calculated is the exact momentum and location of all the particles involved .... at least it can, but the answer will be statistical.

Also Steve (nice to see you again) the opening thread contains a paradox .... and paradoxes do not exist in any system determined or otherwise ... ??

cool bananas ... greg

[SteveA]

We may have expectations in regard to what will happen if we drop an apple, yet I agree that there are significant elements of uncertainty related to even such a simple experiment. Some are related to the properties of the apple, some to the mechanics of it's release, others to the medium through which it shall drop, the angle of impact etc.

Yes, in real life there are many other influences that could potentially become involved in the dynamics of the apple falling and though we could "roughly approximate" the general characteristics of falling apples with, depending upon how we want to measure accuracy, maybe 99.999%+ accuracy, if the standard was moved to a requirement for precise prediction of every aspect, then I might assume the accuracy of prediction for the characteristics of falling apples was potentially 0% or none at all.

If we assume apples are made of trillions of atoms and were to expect that all the interactions of these over time with the environment could be 100% predicted in all respects, then it would appear likely noone has ever predicted how apples fall

Notice also that mental

If we take only the simple logical "model" of a few discrete states, such as listed above and then were to additionally assume that this sequence would always, undeniably be followed such that every "released apple" (state) would terminate accordingly to these "rules of evolution" as the "apple hit ground and made sound" state, then this is the same as counting from 1 and stopping at 4.

No matter how many such systems began at "1", they'd always end up at 4. The only uncertainty of any observation would be over which systems were in what state at any particular moment, but all the properties of such uncertainty of observation and moments of time appear to lie outside of the unchanging rules of evolution of the system. Any form of "pause" in which an apple is in some state of "falling, but waiting to be seen" or "hitting the ground slightly earlier than another apple" etc. are all outside of those 4 states and I don't believe any form of durations of time are specifiable solely within that system either - we could say that the time it takes for an apple to fall is one second, but that singular state isn't subdivisible into smaller units, nor does it inherently include a watch that could count by 1/1000 of a second, otherwise that singular state would need to be changed to 1000 states in order to be informationally closed and become deterministic and have 1000 possible positions that the falling apple could be in.

There is far more uncertainty than certainty, as regards all of these observable processes we call change, at least in my opinion and experience.

Yes, I'd tend to agree. On the other hand, any form of coherent interaction with an environment would appear to require that some "stable handles" exist and predictable mechanics and manners of observation remain.

This is an interesting consideration because we could consider that despite a large quantity of unknown/uncertain elements, it would appear that much or all of what's most significant part about it is the aspects in which some coherent/bidirectional interaction are possible.

Consider this - if you're holding a rock, the interior of the rock isn't accessible and might be considered to contain unknowns or uncertain elements, but the surface of the rock is available to interact with and the rock could be rotated in various ways by interacting with its surface, despite that we could imagine it to contain many unknowns.

If we were to attempt to measure what the relative "density" or volume was of the surface of interaction versus the total volume of the rock, the units in many ways aren't even comparable - cubic units of volume and square units of surface area aren't inherently interchangeable and someone could say that almost the complete volume of the rock contains unwitnessed/unknown/uncertain aspects of its interior, yet at any moment it's only the surface that's being interacted with and these interactions are highly controllable, interactive and visible (except as a rotation might come to reveal new aspects of its surface).

That's a rough analogy of how I believe conscious experiences and interactions occur in time. If we were to equate the rock with the result of something having evolved from a deterministic set of rules, then the rock never changes and doesn't propagate sound/compression waves through it (if we were to look at the rock during some point at which a compression wave was traveling through it, it would be altered - if the rock was a self-contained and "informationally closed" object, then it should always remain in a singular form and not be a nebulous thing that could exist in various states of transmitting wave information through it).

Notice in a real rock, any waves propagating through it could be assumed to arise from external interactions with its surface(s), and we could only verify surface interactions in any case (even an MRI would still only image the rock via a surrounding surface).

My basic intent here is to demonstrate a perspective that I believe is closely related to a rather fundamental duality that exists in more or less any/every "thing" when we include change. The "things", to the extent they're precise are unchanging/static objects. Any changes made to these occur instantly and precisely defined "motions" (if such can exist. Greg might have pointed out a paradox) "propagate instantly" or with an equivalent of an infinitely fast velocity.

I believe motions, changes and times consciously experienced arise from non-deterministic aspects that "things" and the rules/laws that define their forms do not provide and going back to the rock analogy - the rock could be seen to define a specific form, but that form doesn't define how its altered by its surface of interaction and though we can witness interactions with a rock, the surface of that interaction doesn't exist anywhere within the rock and similarly, if waves were to travel through that rock, it would not be something inherent with the properties of the rock itself but closer to an alteration of density of space within which the form of the rock is contained (or at least that could be a good comparison for the level of abstraction I'm trying to represent).

Though we often seek to replicate certain elements of our experiencing, because we are constantly inputting new sensory data and incorporating same into our framework of assessment and comprehension, I would suggest that all experience is unique to the object/person of the change involved.

As for my ability to debate the actual title of your thread, there appears to be far more simultaneous motion than we may have earlier surmised,

An interesting correlation here is with qualities of matter observed in quantum mechanics. Objects can be "entangled" over arbitrarily large distance with shared properties that are continuously/instantly/simultaneously related, yet objects in quantum mechanics also exist as "wavefunctions" which are the equivalent of statistical windows of probability.

This correlates well with my comments above and for the rock analogy, the form of the rock could be analogized with a wavefunction describing the possible surface positions by which an interaction (a.k.a. "wavefunction collapse") occurs (photon).

If relative "rates" of time between two deterministic systems is unmeasurable, undefinable or non-sensical then we could similarly find that the "rock" exists as a statistical surface and the precise orientation at any moment couldn't be predicted (but I don't believe that's truly the case - it's just that trying to make a measurement from the rock can't give this information and it's ignoring other information that's available ... like the hand spinning it ).

and in regard to infinite velocities.....I haven't arrived there yet. Not certain of how one could satisfactorily 'prove' infinite.

Good point. I take the existence of time to imply something beyond a finite ability to describe/contain, but I guess that's one of those things that's just assumed true or relies on faith.

A good question as well could be to ask someone to prove that nothing infinite exists ... that's another tough one to do, though I'd assume that if an infinite exists there might be an infinite number of finite ways to show that everything terminates.

I assume any decent proof requires a termination so maybe the closest thing to proving that an infinite exists is that there's no such proof?

I'm at work now but saw your reply on the other thread. Thanks. I'll get back to it later on.

[SteveA]

All else being equal ... the motion of the apple when 'dropped' can be determined in advance provided the properties of the apple and (presumably) the earth are known. The apple doesn't drop exactly ... it is attracted to the earth ... and therefore the earth is attracted to the apple.

So tho the apple appears to fall towards the earth, the earth must also rise to meet the apple .... its just a lot bigger and its mass is much greater .. but nevertheless it moves towards the apple.

So while the parabolic motion of the event can be calculated, what cannot be calculated is the exact momentum and location of all the particles involved .... at least it can, but the answer will be statistical.

Also Steve (nice to see you again) the opening thread contains a paradox .... and paradoxes do not exist in any system determined or otherwise ... ??

cool bananas ... greg

Thanks for the welcome, Greg. I'm not certain there's a paradox involved, though the units of time by which various classes of motion may have no simple manner to be compared. In a sense, infinite could also be something that's simply variable or procedurally defined. If infinite is simply the largest finite quantity in existence, it would appear to meet the criteria of "larger than any (other) finite value", if we're referring to an infinite size/magnitude. If terms of infinite being unbounded, well the largest finite value of set could also be variable if the set was variable.

I'd agree that neither of these contexts seem to encapsulate the ideal of something infinite but they might work well enough for purposes of verifying/measuring characteristics of something that could be considered to be infinite.

Something to consider as well is the context of whether or not the past and future are preexisting and we're 'discovering' what already exists in spacetime or whether that discovery is a creative event in the present ... would there be a way to distinguish between the two scenarios? How an infinite thing is treated under each context could appear different, yet give the same verifiable results and be equivalent/synonymous.

Also, I agree with your comment that the uncertainty in the evolution of 'falling apples' (don't you love these technical discussions ) depends upon how much or how diverse the properties are that we're looking at and in a very real sense we can't get anymore information out than was put into it and I think that has many real implications for physical theories.

We could look at the very general question of "given any form of information - what are all the things that can be done with it?" and additionally consider what aspects of that are interactively controllable. More importantly, we could refine this done to something smaller in some ways and in a more meaningful and relevant manner etc. ask how that information via. controllable means influences the "Theory of Everything that Matters".

That seems a great generalized way of looking at most any problem.

[Rybo]

Steve, "logic" is sequential and derived from our finite sets of deterministic, causal experiences as sorted by sorted into patterns by mind.

Cosmic laws are limited to finite physical and quasi-phsyisical universe they having nothing to do with "infinite" but everything to do with eternity.

Eternity is the "instantaneous" and beyond speed you speak of.

Eternity is to speed and infinity is to space.
..{ infinity and eternity are beyond any concept of velocity }....

Logic is to mind as brain is to slide show.

One leads to two by subdivision of the one finite scenario we call Universe.

Subdivision leads to discrete parts and prioritizing those parts into storage areas for later recall, resorting and restoring.

The least uncertainty is the most focused is the least degrees of freedom.

360 degrees is the most degrees of freedom and uncertainty in a 2D system.

A 3D system involves degrees of nodal-vertexial surface events from a common center location.

The minimal polyhedral system( tetrahedron ) has four nodal-vertexial events and 720 degrees of surface angle. So we may say that, two 360 degree circles = the minimal 3D polyhedral system /structure, the tetrahedron.

However, two circles do not define a stable( triangulated ) structure. The minimal set of 360 circles that define a stable triangulated system/structure are the 3 great circle planes of the octahedron.

These are square planes when not viewed as being an infinite frequency set of nodal vertexial events of a curved circle i.e. pure circles and pure spheres are only existent as concepts of mind and not existent physical reality.

Physical and quasi-physical reality is composed of ultra-low to ultra-high set of nodal-vertexial events that are limited to finite speeds, except for thecase of gravity, whose observed speeds and out tolerance for instrumental error of .2% ergo if our calcualations are incorrect bby .2% in the correct direction the gravity is just a fraction greater than EMRadiation.

Still a finite/limited speed tho.

Rybo