The whole quantum mechanics thing just boils down to a lack of comprehension of skepticism. IE just failure to be able to imagine alternate explanations for what you see.
Some of these alternate explanations are investigated by the community at large but not all of them. When you are dealing with a situation that involves things totally different than what you are used to dealing with, everything becomes an unfounded assumption. IE you are likely attributing properties to quantum particles based on your experiences with the macro world without recognizing that you are doing it.
The whole idea that you can recognize all the assumptions you are making is fallacious in any discipline. These assumptions infact always number in the infinite. The only defense against this is that if any of these infinite assumptions were to fail, hopefully you would see it's effects somehow. For instance if a ball were to have a mass that changed during the course of an experiment.
But when you are dealing with something like QM, you have very little ability to observe what is going on. There isn't enough input to allow you to identify when something you assumed was the case about the particles isn't true. In the macro world if something like a ball of changing mass were to occur, it might take centuries for someone to recognize what was going on. And it would be possible because we live in the macro world and make observations about all the consequences of eveything that happens. In the world of particles, our information is a negligable fraction of that which we have in the macro world.
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Originally Posted by ughaibu
Recently, on a different board, a determinist poster remarked that upon learning about probabilistic effects in quantum theory, he was "shocked" and found this "unimaginable". This isn't very far removed from the creationist position that "the universe is too wonderful to be natural, there must be a god", both are cases of denial and come under "appeal to incredulity". However, the determinist has a degree of scientific respectability, as appeal to so called physical laws can be evoked. I have concluded that, in at least some cases, determinism is espoused as a comforting mechanism and functions as an atheistic parallel to the motivations, of some, to adopt a religion.
Another point, in line with this thread's title, determinism cant easily be proven false, as the definition allows the follower to simply say that the universe in state A, being followed by the universe in state B, is determinism. However, as with religion, this is an attempt to switch the burden of proof, the experience, and even the existence, of our individual consciousnesses is a direct contradiction of strong determinism, and as such, can be awarded primacy by any theory of truth.
I'm interested to know what others feel are the motivations for adopting a determinist stance(?)
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I could just as easily refer to an imaginary person who did not understand the concept of skpeticism/limits of induction and say they were in denial that it could not be proven that determinism did not exist and how blind faith in science was similar to creationism. However this is not an actual argument.
I think at the very best, people attempting to claim determinism is false are using a different definition of determinism than those defending it are.
For instance one definition says its the belief that all events have a cause. While another might refer to prior events being causes for events. The latter is an example of one that might be more likely to be disproved, but does not represent what true determinists have an attachment to.
IE time could be reversed or could go back and forth or future events could effect past events etc and all still be within the limits allowed by a true determinist. For reverse time, determinism would refer to the bidirectional relationship between events. For future events effecting past events, to use a metaphor imagine a time rope with a not in it, and to see the real chain of events one would simply untie the knot to see the true chain of events. IE you would create a different kind of timeline where it shows at what point a future event effected a past event and what happened after.
Until these possibilities are dealt with, there is little evidence against true determinism.
