Do we live in a determined world?

[hiphophippy]

yes. Humans just lack the intelligence, equations and calculatory machines to calculate/know when it will happen.

 

[Vader]

That's not a belief that's based on evidence, it's an article of faith. You can hardly claim to be speaking from a scientific perspective if you're making claims like that.

 

[gaktattack]

Unfortunately that's the spiritual half of the coin of P&S, I dont think they really belong together.

Im auntie Cleo, yer astatine will decay in 2 minutes. Thanks for calling darlin.

 

[Jabberwocky]

I believe Quantum Physics takes a different approach although I am not really that familiar with either of them.

What about us? Humans. Are our lives completely determined or are they not?

quantum evolution is deterministic. quantum measurement is only indeterministic in certain interpretations of QM. if you expand your quantum system to include your measuring apparatus you get a set answer in each part of the superposition, but 'many worlds.'

however, one cannot predict which world you will end up in, so its not a great idea to play russian roulette. in that sense, our lives are determined, we will live out every possibility we can. but we only experience one.

recent psychological experiments that i can't be bothered to find a citation for showed that we start acting on a decision without having consciously made it, suggesting our actions are determined. i kinda consider a brain to be like a chaotic system, so though the laws governing it are determinisitc, the outcomes of a string of events can't be predicted.

I don't seem to wind up in as much circular reasoning as you have postulated. Things go from a high energy state to a low on until more energy is absorbed into the system. The level of order is determined by the level energy.

i think you mean 'free energy' here, corresponding to a rise in entropy. the level of order, i.e. entropy, does not alone determine energy, as its based on the microstates accessible by a system and there is some probability that a statistical mechanical system will enter a high energy microstate, though the probability is low. (sorry to be penickity but these arguments lose all coherence v quickly once imprecision enters)

for the universe as a whole though, as we can't get more energy from elsewhere, we can confidently say that our best laws of physics predict that its computing its ground state (geometry considerations aside...).

i think there are too many layers of abstraction between physics and consciousness, and not enough knowledge about the bits in between, to really know if the laws of physics being deterministic imply that we behave deterministically.

 

[!!4iV4HF9R34g]

^ Bam. Cognitive Science, on the rise.

I still believe that Existence is self-determinative, and everything manifests in some form.

What's important is understanding how determination occurs (cognition).
That way, eventually we could calculate and manipulate our own experience in a literal, completely fundamental way.
(Of course, we do that just existing anyway, but it's so hard to determine oneself..) Haha.