[extropy-chat] Accelerated wound healing by the body electric

scerir scerir at libero.it
Fri Aug 4 06:38:31 UTC 2006


From: "BillK"
He wrote that letter in German, so we are working
with a translation. "Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt,
dass der nicht würfelt". At any rate, I am convinced that
He does not throw dice. Albert Einstein once noted
in a letter to George Seldes, 'Many things which go under
my name are badly translated from the German or are
invented by other people.' [...]

# Perfect. Thanks. See below how Dirac [1] supports
Einstein's 'ignorance interpretation' of qm. For a
different opinion see [2].
s.

[1] "This statistical interpretation is now universally
accepted as the best possible interpretation for quantum
mechanics, even though many people are unhappy with it.
People had got used to the determinism of the last century,
where the present determines the future completely,
and they now have to get used to a different situation
in which the present only gives one information of
a statistical nature about the future. A good many people
find this unpleasant; Einstein has always objected to it.
The way he expressed it was: 'The good God does not play
with dice'. Schroedinger also did not like the statistical
interpretation and tried for many years to find an
interpretation involving determinism for his waves.
But it was not successful as a general method.
I must say that I also do not like indeterminism.
I have to accept it because it is certainly the best
that we can do with our present knowledge. One can always
hope that there will be future developments which
will lead to a drastically different theory from the present
quantum mechanics and for which there may be a partial
return of determinism. However, so long as one keeps to
the present formalism, one has to have this indeterminism."
(P.A.M. Dirac, 'The Development Of Quantum Mechanics', 1974)

[2] "In a non-deterministic world, probability has nothing
to do with incomplete knowledge. Quantum mechanics is the first
example in human experience where probabilities play an essential
role even when there is nothing to be ignorant about."
(D. Mermin)









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