Re: Won arguments?

On May 9, 2:37 am, brog...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On May 9, 11:53 am, Walter Bushell <p...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1178669415.014970.316...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

brog...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Thought experiments like Schrodinger's cat and carefully
structured experiments aside, quantum randomness does not seem to have
much effect on macroscopic systems.

My favorite thought experiment shows the effects can be quite large.

Consider an Atom bomb in Tel Aviv set to go off in a given period if the
number of particles radiated by a radioactive source exceed the expected
at say the 75% level. That is the bomb goes off 1/4 of the time. (Don't
try this at home.)

As I said, if you purposely rig a system so that it amplifies random
events like radioactive decay, then, yes, the effects can be large.
That does not mean however, that as a general rule quantum randomness
leads to macroscopic randomness. Most often it does not. If it did,
there would be no macroscopic laws of nature.



Or just use a radioactive source to pick lottery winners.

Perhaps the whole history of life on Earth was changed by a background
radiation put life on one pathway rather than another.

Oh yes, there was a specific man of the nobility in Russia (IIRC) who
passed his haemophilia into the royal families in Europe and hence this
quantum effect changed history. Some sources say Queen Victoria.

This was a chance event, but hardly a quantum event.



Genes are a *perfect* mechanism for amplifying quantum effects without
human intervention.

Actually, I think the predominant sources of apparent randomness in
mutation are not quantum fluctuations in anything. Why does a
particular mutation occur at a particular locus on a particular
Wednesday afternoon? Some of the randomness comes from, say, a
radioactive decay in some bit of soil mineral that sent a high enough
energy particle towards a particular adenine, but the reasons why that
base and not another are mutated innclude a whole host of complex but
deterministic reasons as well. Why was the organism standing where it
was, why that bit of DNA was on the right side of a histone complex to
take the hit, why the repair enzyme didn;t excise the damaged base
before replication could occur, etc., etc. Genetics may amplify chance
events, but most of those chance events are not quantum events.

The fact is that indeterminate factors have had a huge effect on
history, even if much smaller than determinate ones.

.

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