Xref: utzoo comp.ai:2291 sci.physics:4513
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From: mike@maths.tcd.ie (Michael Rogers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.physics
Subject: ( Originally re Turing machines) AKA  For whom the Bell tolls.
Message-ID: <48@maths.tcd.ie>
Date: 23 Sep 88 22:19:51 GMT
Reply-To: mike@maths.tcd.ie (Michael Rogers)
Organization: Maths Dept., Trinity College, Dublin
Lines: 29


	In <29891@bbn.COM> mesard@bbn.com states:

> seem--to the uninformed eye--random and unpredictable.  But given the
> proper information [note I don't say observational powers and thus avoid
> the Uncertainty Principle], one can exactly predict the paths that the
> ball will take.
> but the principle is still the same.  We may never have enough
> information to exactly predict events in the universe, or even a
> reasonable subregion thereof.  But the inability to make the exact
> calculation doesn't mean that the universe isn't exactly, completely
> deterministic.
	
	This seems to me to be flagrantly illogical. *How* can one obtain
the proper information without using one's observational powers? 
	Forgive me restating, but I am worried that I am missing some
extremely simple point, probably due to this late hour of the night :-)
	*If* one can't predict events in a subregion, and will never be
able to, and will get paradox's if one trys, then *how* can the Universe
be thus deterministic. One would need to have ( shudder ) hidden variables.
But then in comes Bell's wonderful theorem.
	There may indeed be hidden variables, but they are as well hid as
the luminiferous aether or the Central Fire.
	I shall have to sleep over this.
-- 
Mike Rogers, 			...!{seismo,ihnp4,decvax}!mcvax!ukc!tcdmath!mike
39.16 Trinity  College,       
Dublin University,	        ...staccato signals of constant information...
Dublin 2, Ireland.	      					Simon.