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Mathmatically, is the universe already written?

slicer4ever

slicer4ever

Coding random shit
i've rarely shared this idea with anyone, mostly because i don't want to believe it to be true, but do regardless(as well, i don't know if there may be already debates on such an idea).

technically, if at some point, IF we discover that everything in the universe can be quantified to a mathematical equation, velocity, motion, inertia, electirical signals, everything, can be described through math, where t is generally the time that is used to plot the points, then doesn't that mean the universe itself has a form of fate, that nothing itself can be changed, since mathematically, it's only an very very VERY complex algorithm, which would take the exact amount time of the universe to be ran?

while i do see that many would argue that we can't comprehend the universe in a different form of thinking than math, that things can be random, and there have been proposed theory's which actually take in to the fact that the universe is random in some way, wouldn't those theory's only arise because we don't understand, or observe some underlining mechanism of the universe, and once we can observe them, we would be able to fill in the blanks?

any opinions on the subject?
 
MenaceInc

MenaceInc

Staff Member
I remember reading a theory that pi contains everything....that it contains every copyright peice of software, all the works of Shakespeare, every song ever written or will be written and that trying to calculate pi will amount to massive copyright theft...

As for whether the universe could be quantified into a single expression, I doubt it. It is however a massive mix of loads of simple and complex ones.
 
Bran

Bran

Yell
No.

Ultimately, some things can be predicted, but there is too much random variance that would make such mathematical projections inaccurate.

Also, obligatory 42 reference.
 
slicer4ever

slicer4ever

Coding random shit
Bran said:
No.

Ultimately, some things can be predicted, but there is too much random variance that would make such mathematical projections inaccurate.

Also, obligatory 42 reference.
Click to expand...
i'm not talking about humans doing any predicting, i'm just talking that theoretically, if everything could be devised into an equation, where randomness does not exist(at our current understanding, it may seem like random things do exist, but that may be because we don't understand everything that occurs in the universe), then, doesn't that mean that everything is on a set course, observed through the passage of time

edit: also, what do you mean by "obligatory 42 reference"?

@menace, i've never thought of pi in that way
 
MenaceInc

MenaceInc

Staff Member
slicer4ever said:
i'm not talking about humans doing any predicting, i'm just talking that theoretically, if everything could be devised into an equation, where randomness does not exist(at our current understanding, it may seem like random things do exist, but that may be because we don't understand everything that occurs in the universe), then, doesn't that mean that everything is on a set course, observed through the passage of time

edit: also, what do you mean by "obligatory 42 reference"?

@menace, i've never thought of pi in that way
Click to expand...

http://everything2.com/title/Converting+Pi+to+binary%3A+Don%27t+do+it%21


Also, 42 is a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference and is the answer to Life, The Universe and Everything.
 
angelsniper45

angelsniper45

New Member
Bran said:
No.

Ultimately, some things can be predicted, but there is too much random variance that would make such mathematical projections inaccurate.

Also, obligatory 42 reference.
Click to expand...

Nothing can truly be predicted, although there are some things that have gotten close, there are to many factors to consider, and therefore predictions are usually off

not to bring anything political into this or sound spamy, but the oil spill predictions of how many barrels were actually spilling per day? look how many different numbers there were. no one really ever knew.
 
Bran

Bran

Yell
angelsniper45 said:
Nothing can truly be predicted, although there are some things that have gotten close, there are to many factors to consider, and therefore predictions are usually off
Click to expand...
That's true but it's still bullshit. I predict that if I drop a bowling ball it will hit the ground 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the time. It's possible the bowling ball could explode. Or the Earth could explode. Or the Bowling ball could fucking warp into some other area of space and time. But it's essentially going to fall 100% of the time.
 
Slasher

Slasher

Suck It
But then again, that would depend on the environment in which you drop it from. Perhaps you're dropping it onto a couch, therefore evading the floor underneath it.

Similar to, for example, the universe: There's trillions upon trillions (probably more) of material objects, hence making it near-impossible to accurately predict much of anything and its trajectory. I mean, we've seen it time and time again, 'this x meteor will collide with earth on Feb 20th 2007', and these dates continuously come and go. Predictions concerning the universe are often very inaccurate, especially concerning matters we're not currently able to be fully aware of.

Perhaps in that sense, it is theoretically possible to construct not one, but a series of equations to predict the outcome of our universe - but it would even then still be impossible to tell any possible causal relationships between these near-infinite array of equations. I doubt that even our most current powerful computers/technologies could calculate such a complex web of equations.

Cause and effect can easily be determined under specific, controlled circumstances. For example, the relationship between two specific variables (eg. bowling ball + floor) affecting an outcome is pretty easily predicted. However, factor in trillions more variables, and predictions will inevitably become less accurate to the point of not even knowing.
 
Bran

Bran

Yell
Slasher said:
But then again, that would depend on the environment in which you drop it from. Perhaps you're dropping it onto a couch, therefore evading the floor underneath it.

Cause and effect can easily be determined under specific, controlled circumstances. For example, the relationship between two specific variables (eg. bowling ball + floor) affecting an outcome is pretty easily predicted. However, factor in trillions more variables, and predictions will inevitably become less accurate to the point of not even knowing.
Click to expand...
That's my point though, prediction requires an understanding of the situation. If you try to predict something without understanding the circumstances then you are a fool making shot-in-the-dark guesses. It's the larger predictions that fail because they rely on many other smaller predictions.
 
Joey

Joey

New Member
Bran said:
That's my point though, prediction requires an understanding of the situation. If you try to predict something without understanding the circumstances then you are a fool making shot-in-the-dark guesses. It's the larger predictions that fail because they rely on many other smaller predictions.
Click to expand...

Predictability doesn't require understanding of anything. Just because we don't have the date needed to predict something, doesn't mean said data doesn't exist.

I think slicer asks a good question, I just don't think this is a good venue to get good answers. None of us are near qualified to answer this question.

I do feel like I understand where slicer is coming from, I'm just not near smart enough to have my own worthwhile opinion on it.
 
J

jas0nuk

New Member
Whoever suggested that random possibility can never be eliminated was spot on.

All experimental evidence so far shows that quantum physics, and not classical physics, is correct. Quantum physics gives you a range of different answers to a problem, and with each answer is assigned a probability that you'll get that answer (roughly speaking). So you get a distribution of possible outcomes. If you perform an experiment infinitely many times (or as close as you can get to infinitely many times), your range of outcomes will exactly match that distribution, and your average outcome will be the one for which the probability is highest.

e.g. particle in a simple box where the potential at each wall of the box is infinitely high - so the particle cannot exist at any of the edges (vertices) of the box. If you gather all the parameters and plug them into the Scrodinger equation you get a wavefunction which tells you where you'll find the particle. The most likely outcome, of course, is equal distance from each of the 4 vertices, so if the box is 1 unit wide and 1 unit tall, you're most likely to find the particle at 0.5 units up and 0.5 across - but NOT ALWAYS.

Sometime in the 20th century it was postulated by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen that there are hidden facts/data/variables we don't know about which are causing this to happen, rather than it being just the way the universe works. Then the physicist John Bell came along and proved mathematically that this isn't the case.

tl;dr: No, the universe isn't already written - at the heart of all laws of nature there is randomness built in.
 
slicer4ever

slicer4ever

Coding random shit
jas0nuk said:
Sometime in the 20th century it was postulated by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen that there are hidden facts/data/variables we don't know about which are causing this to happen, rather than it being just the way the universe works. Then the physicist John Bell came along and proved mathematically that this isn't the case.
Click to expand...

how exactly did John Bell prove that there are no more variables that could be causing the seemingly random events?, it seems a rather bold claim to say that randomness does exist, when we have yet to understand every function that can occur in the universe, however, perhaps my idea's only spawn from what Joey said, i'm simply not smart enough to understand, which i can perfectly accept, but at the same time, everything that i understand of mathmatics lead's me to believe that things arn't actually random, but just an extraordinary complex system that we may or may not ever fully understand
 
MenaceInc

MenaceInc

Staff Member
jas0nuk said:
Whoever suggested that random possibility can never be eliminated was spot on.

All experimental evidence so far shows that quantum physics, and not classical physics, is correct. Quantum physics gives you a range of different answers to a problem, and with each answer is assigned a probability that you'll get that answer (roughly speaking). So you get a distribution of possible outcomes. If you perform an experiment infinitely many times (or as close as you can get to infinitely many times), your range of outcomes will exactly match that distribution, and your average outcome will be the one for which the probability is highest.

e.g. particle in a simple box where the potential at each wall of the box is infinitely high - so the particle cannot exist at any of the edges (vertices) of the box. If you gather all the parameters and plug them into the Scrodinger equation you get a wavefunction which tells you where you'll find the particle. The most likely outcome, of course, is equal distance from each of the 4 vertices, so if the box is 1 unit wide and 1 unit tall, you're most likely to find the particle at 0.5 units up and 0.5 across - but NOT ALWAYS.

Sometime in the 20th century it was postulated by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen that there are hidden facts/data/variables we don't know about which are causing this to happen, rather than it being just the way the universe works. Then the physicist John Bell came along and proved mathematically that this isn't the case.

tl;dr: No, the universe isn't already written - at the heart of all laws of nature there is randomness built in.
Click to expand...

Considering that jas0nuk's forte is advanced mathematics and physics, I would take this as the word of pretty much an expert.


Or maybe it was all just God.
 
J

jas0nuk

New Member
slicer4ever said:
how exactly did John Bell prove that there are no more variables that could be causing the seemingly random events?, it seems a rather bold claim to say that randomness does exist, when we have yet to understand every function that can occur in the universe, however, perhaps my idea's only spawn from what Joey said, i'm simply not smart enough to understand, which i can perfectly accept, but at the same time, everything that i understand of mathmatics lead's me to believe that things arn't actually random, but just an extraordinary complex system that we may or may not ever fully understand
Click to expand...
Have a read of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_theorem and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochen-Specker_theorem

The whole thing is quite deeply integrated with quantum mechanics and is rather difficult to explain.
 
angelsniper45

angelsniper45

New Member
Joey said:
Predictability doesn't require understanding of anything. Just because we don't have the date needed to predict something, doesn't mean said data doesn't exist.

I think slicer asks a good question, I just don't think this is a good venue to get good answers. None of us are near qualified to answer this question.

I do feel like I understand where slicer is coming from, I'm just not near smart enough to have my own worthwhile opinion on it.
Click to expand...

x1million. Were smart, but this is in einsteins and stephen hawkings relm. Not us. Lol
 
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