Marados
100+ Head-Fier
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- Apr 27, 2006
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Quote:
This method of thought (sometimes called Determinism) is appealing, but once you study physics you realise that it's flawed.
It relies on the fact that cause = effect, which is true, but the world doesn't work entirely like that. Following this method of thought, nothing is random (because everything has a definite cause, therefor a definite effect), but radioactive decay and quantum interactions shows us that there is true randomness.
I don't know enough to talk about quantum interactions, but I'll gladly talk about radioactive decay and transmutation. Basically, when something is "radioactive", it's nucleus is unstable. There are three different types of radioactive decay:
Alpha, Beta, and Gamma decay.
These release various particles (or an electromagnetic wave in the case of Gamma), and the specifics are irrelevent for the what we're talking about (although really interesting; you should look up said decay just out of interest, things like Anti-Neutrinos are amazing and interesting in their own right).
Now, we've all heard of half-life, which is the expected duration of time for a particular collection of a particular radioactive particle to transmutate and decay. However, this function has a cut-off value - at a point, you simply cannot predict the estimated half-life of a particular element if there isn't enough of it. This is because when a particle decays is, in reality, completely random. And it's this phenomenon which disproves Determinism.
And as for the men and nipples thing? It's got to do with embryotic development. It's the same reason a clitoris and a penis are made of the same embryotic tissue.
Originally Posted by acidbasement /img/forum/go_quote.gif My favourite question is related to free will. Given the laws of thermodynamics, if all energy and matter was produced and set in motion by the Big Bang, then how can any of us have free will? Isn't everything that happens in the Universe an inevitable, however unlikely, consequence of that initial explosion of energy and matter? It's all just fallout, atoms bouncing off one another, however many billion years later. |
This method of thought (sometimes called Determinism) is appealing, but once you study physics you realise that it's flawed.
It relies on the fact that cause = effect, which is true, but the world doesn't work entirely like that. Following this method of thought, nothing is random (because everything has a definite cause, therefor a definite effect), but radioactive decay and quantum interactions shows us that there is true randomness.
I don't know enough to talk about quantum interactions, but I'll gladly talk about radioactive decay and transmutation. Basically, when something is "radioactive", it's nucleus is unstable. There are three different types of radioactive decay:
Alpha, Beta, and Gamma decay.
These release various particles (or an electromagnetic wave in the case of Gamma), and the specifics are irrelevent for the what we're talking about (although really interesting; you should look up said decay just out of interest, things like Anti-Neutrinos are amazing and interesting in their own right).
Now, we've all heard of half-life, which is the expected duration of time for a particular collection of a particular radioactive particle to transmutate and decay. However, this function has a cut-off value - at a point, you simply cannot predict the estimated half-life of a particular element if there isn't enough of it. This is because when a particle decays is, in reality, completely random. And it's this phenomenon which disproves Determinism.
And as for the men and nipples thing? It's got to do with embryotic development. It's the same reason a clitoris and a penis are made of the same embryotic tissue.