How can a deterministic universe exist? Assuming that universe IS deterministic, then it is basically some huge system of states that react deterministically to other events.
Hypothesis: The universe is a deterministic state machine.
If the universe is a deterministic state machine, then it has to have a starting state. All deterministic state machines MUST have a starting state. This is only true for deterministic state machines.
Assertion: Something can not come from nothing. In a universe that is deterministic this is obviously true.
Consider the starting state of the deterministic universe. What came before this state? What was the initial event that started the whole process? If there is a beginning then there must be a ‘before’. Since something can not come from nothing, the deterministic universe could not be the true universe, but a subset within a greater system that ultimately is non-deterministic.
Conclusion: The universe is not deterministic.
A non-deterministic system does not have to have (but can) a starting state. Since it does not have to have one, and assuming it doesn’t it can in fact have always existed. Since it always has existed and has no beginning (or end?) it does not violate the principal that something can not come from nothing.
Comments:
Since the systems of logic we use today is deterministic we will never be able to grasp the truly random. Our system of reasoning can not handle such a concept until such of a time that we develop a complete system of reasoning. As I believe Godel said, “There are questions with definite answers that we can never prove to be true or false.”
Author: Mark (aka_rawhide[ at ]hotmail.com)
Date: Nov 22, 2000REPLY: I think its at least temporarily deterministic
Hi,
I suppose its somewhat imaginable that a more capable universe exists, above and beyound ours, which is not deterministic. That doesn't do us much good however. If we exist inside a closed universe that was kicked started by a non-deterministic universe, we are still, incapable of free-will. The only possible way we could have free will is if somehow our universe isn't entirely cut off from the non-deterministic one, so that our consciousnesses, or souls if you will, exist in the non-deterministic universe and communicated with our brains in the deterministic universe. Now that I think about it, it seems pretty interesting. Since our universe is deterministic, it would mean that a decision made in the non-determininistic universe would have certain and predictable results in our universe. I wonder if decisions made in the non-deterministic universe would have non-determiniable effects in that universe.
