Do you believe in casuality in real life?

[KickAssClown]

I would go with Siddartha's Dependent Origin Principle. That no event is without a cause, that no observation is independent of the observer.

In this universe, we are intimately tied to what we are. Weather it be Spiritual, Physical, Mental, or Emotional. What we experience is never outside of what we can experience. I am matter so all I can interact with in any meaningful way is matter. If I push a ball then there is an event and there will be an action and reaction within this event. That I decided to push the ball is formed of it's own set of Casuality.

Cause is one end of the Duality of the universe. Cause-Effect, Light-Dark, Mass-Energy, Space-Time, Good-Bad. These are all dependent on one another. This is Casuality in my eyes. So yes I would have to say I believe in Casuality.

[cwes99_03]

Originally Posted by Zythryn

I believe it does IF you know everything that may influence the event.

So, if you kick the ball, and you know there is glue holding the ball in place, and you know how strong the glue is and you know how strong the surface of the ground is, and.... then you will know the result.

That's not what I meant. I mean that if you can prove that for every action there is a cause (i.e. no free will exists, humans make decisions completely based off of cause and effect) then it is possible to know the entire history of the universe and the entire future of it as well. The only way to do this though is to know the precise location and information including momentum of every particle in the universe. Currently we can't do that, and Heisenburg says it is impossible.

[pgrmdave]

Just because we cannot know a particle's position and velocity at the same time does not mean that casuality does not exist - the Uncertainty Principle is, at its core, a human limitation - particles have a position and velocity similtaneously.

[cwes99_03]

You are correct, but the point was that it is impossible for us to know them because the act of measurement changes one or the other.
But anyway, would my understanding of the term causality be correct?

[hallenrm]

Does that mean that there is solid reason to believe in astrology; because the central premise of astrology is that human destinity is governed by the position of planets at time of birth.

[pgrmdave]

It is as reasonable to believe in astrology as it is to believe that your destiny is determined by the clouds, the moon, or my foot. Just because it affects you doesn't mean we can know how, or to what degree.

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by Zythryn

I believe it does IF you know everything that may influence the event.
So, if you kick the ball, and you know there is glue holding the ball in place, and you know how strong the glue is and you know how strong the surface of the ground is, and.... then you will know the result.

Nope. All you can do is calculate an approximate answer. You may successfully predict the trajectory of the ball to within a meter--or a centimeter--or a micron. But it will always be an approximation.

Infinite knowledge of current state of anything is physically and inherently impossible.

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by pgrmdave

Just because we cannot know a particle's position and velocity at the same time does not mean that casuality does not exist - the Uncertainty Principle is, at its core, a human limitation - particles have a position and velocity similtaneously.

Schroedinger, Pauli, Heisenberg and others (the "fathers" of quantum physics) would disagree with you. The human limitation is in the concepts of "position" and "velocity". They are human approximations that apply only to macro aggregates of matter. At the atomic level, they have limited validity--like the fragrance of the number 7, or the mass of Love.

[pgrmdave]

I know they would disagree with me, but I still stick to what I think. My question to you is - can particles collide? If so, then each particle must 'know' the other particle's position at the time (same as it's own) and must 'know' the other particle's velocity at the time (as it reacts to it).

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by pgrmdave

I know they would disagree with me, but I still stick to what I think. My question to you is - can particles collide? If so, then each particle must 'know' the other particle's position at the time (same as it's own) and must 'know' the other particle's velocity at the time (as it reacts to it).

Yes, they can collide. But not in YOUR sense. You assume an aggregate matter collision with aggregate matter rules. You assume aggregate matter position, and so on and so on. The 'rules' at the quantum level have nothing to do with "position", "velocity", "collisions", "reactions" or any other every-day mundane human conception.

And we know this because of the contra-intuitive results we obtain from quantum experiments.

You would be right IF and ONLY IF matter and energy were smoothly continuous all the way down to infinitesimal zeros. Reality isn't continuous. All the physics rules you are familiar with cease to be of any application at all once you get down to the realm of the discrete quanta.