Is the universe deterministic, meaning that all events and outcomes are determined by preceding causes and governed by predictable laws, or is it indeterministic, meaning that there is an element of chance and randomness in the world? - by Franklin Veaux 2023 - Quora Question Review

This document contains a review of the answer by Franklin Veaux on the question in Quora:"Is the universe deterministic, meaning that all events and outcomes are determined by preceding causes and governed by predictable laws, or is it indeterministic, meaning that there is an element of chance and randomness in the world?"
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Contents

Reflection


1. Answer Review

The best available evidence suggests a non-deterministic universe. Evidence from, for example, radioactive decay points to a universe that is on some level stochastic, probabilistic, but not deterministic.
The problem of the answer is that it uses many concepts, which are not clear and have to be defined.

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Reflection 1 - Question Review

The major problem of the question: "Is the universe deterministic, meaning that all events and outcomes are determined by preceding causes and governed by predictable laws, or is it indeterministic, meaning that there is an element of chance and randomness in the world?" that the question is not clear.
A much simpler question is: Can the evolution of the universe be predicted? The answer is no. We can in principle measure the state of our local environment, that means we can measure the positions of each of the objects involved at a sequence of events and predict the future, but at the long run all these predictions will fail.
One of the main reasons is accuracy and our incapability to measure the state of all objects in the universe.
But there is a much more physical issue: The evolution of the universe is a complete autarch process, in the sense of self supporting, consisting of many smaller processes which all influence each other etc etc. This evolution in general is not controlled or governed by any law. As such all galaxies are different.
You could call this evolution indeterministic and define that as the complete opposite of deterministic. Deterministic defined as the outcome of a computer program written in for example Fortran


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Created: 1 June 2023

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