Is the future inevitable?

I don't go for either of those alternatives. I just say that if our world is predetermined, I can't change the outcome. If I can't change the outcome, i do not have choice - all I have is the appearance choice.

How do you arrive ar that position? 3. Your actions sometimes predictable based on....whatever ... sometimes not.4. Your actions even when upredictable are not random or arbitrary.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

That's not all. I put up a Christmas tree, and you know, I really didn't have to. I could have done it tomorrow, or not at all. I could have played the Dice Man game and left it to chance. But instead I did it today - despite my wife asking for it last week. It was predictable that it would happen, but a betting man would would have put money on the first Saturday in December. It's all a bit silly isn't it.

I just don't think it's necessary to add the qualifiers 'past experience' - if you can't make decisions based on anything at all that will change a predetermined outcome then you don't have free choice.But, as you say, it doesn't matter if we don't know any better. Except, of course, the entire concept of sin is then defunct - for those that believe in that stuff.

I don't think there is anyway of proving we don't live in a determinate world. The closest I can get to it is to say that if randomness exists in it, then a world can not be determinate.But we wouldn't know any different because, well we wouldn't know any different.

Buggered if I know. I don't have a lot of time for word arguments - which is what these things always resolve into - and I don't have the maths necessary to take it elswhere.I do think that there's two crucial points though.1. We know that we have freedom of choice because we excercise it everyday. But we can't ever know if there's a ghost in the machine or a grand puppet master - but, you know, what are the odds? We know that life on earth evolved in a hap-hazard way and we're just part of that process - if there isn't randomness and choas in a few billions of years of evolution the words don't have meaning.2. If there is true randomness in our world then I say it can't be deterministic. We know in our own mind that we can make our own decisions but if we can't trust that we can play the Dice Man game and base our decisions on pure probability. I don't see how you can get round that without claiming that even probability can be pre-determined. That's too false a word game for me. At that point I just shrug really.

You really can't have it both ways, either something is random or it's determinate. If you make the words mean the same, there's nothing to discuss. I think you're mixing up random and arbitrary. Randomness is bounded - a dice has 6 sides not 6 sides and a kitten..

We all agree that. That's why a dice can't roll a kitten - randomness is bounded by its physical state. So we agree that we can dump the kitten then ;-) If we have true agency - ie we can do things without then being pre-determined - then we live in a non-determinate world. We all think we can, and if I doubt it I can roll my dice. If you don't accept that a dice roll is random I'll gamble with photons.. Q: Do physicists really believe in true randomness? | Ask a Mathematician / Ask a Physicist

A throw of the dice IS random. If you must take the extreme position that the result of my dice throw can be known before I throw it (because of perfect knowledge of all physical states) I'll use a photon instead of a dice - which is not affected by such conditions. But it does! It means I'm not able to make free choices - the decisions have already been made for me by historical cause and effect.

If you put a human consciousness into the equation, it can't be deterministic because I can screw with it.

Suppose I said I'll press this button if that photon goes through the polarizer to the left but I won't if it goes to the right?

Both acts require human consciousness. Doesn't matter whether the machine I built pulls the trigger based on my programming, or me directly.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

It's traditional to show your workings :-)But in any case I only have to give a single instance of how determinism can be broken for determinism to be broken. Something is either deterministic or it ain't.

I know, I am agreeing with him (not that I could disagree with his physics) but NoNukes appears to be making distinctions between stuff at quantum level - which we all agree appears to be prperly random - and stuff at a macro level. I'm giving an example how a macro sized lump of stuff - me - could use quantum level randomness to create a non-deterministic outcome.

Well, I'd say so.