exchemist
Veteran Member
Yes a good thread - until the, ahem, less serious contributors arrive, at least.First, I want to thank everyone participating in this excellent thread for such an interesting discussion, and especially @Polymath257 for starting the thread.
Second, you're all such morons for failing to grasp even on the most rudimentary level, as I myself have, the simple fact that quantum mechanics proves beyond doubt aliens are visiting us in order to conduct anal probes on fans of Country and Western music!!!!!
Actually, I don't believe that even for a nanosecond. You pretty much all seem knowledgeable to me. But this is RF, and you were having a civil discussion, so I was alarmed that something might be wrong -- terribly wrong -- here. Hence, my obligatory ignorant and arrogant outburst.
Next, and more seriously, I must honestly apologize for my own ignorance of quantum mechanics, and for the fact I might be asking some dumb questions now or later on -- if and when I'm not merely lurking.
You see, the fact is, QM never interested me until quite recently in life, except for my early on interest in QM as an obvious and exciting means of picking up babes in bars (e.g. "So...is it 'Lisa'?...so Lisa, shall we go to my apartment, have a little more wine, and then discuss 'entanglement' in the privacy of my bedroom? Or would you prefer to entangle on my kitchen table where you'll find even more cheese than in my pick-up lines?"). Hence, I have only recently gotten interested in it, and that mainly for its philosophical implications.
Having said all that, please allow me now to ask two questions.
1) Does the fact (as indeed I understand it to be a fact) that in QM some effects are completely uncaused (e.g. radioactive decay) imply that the universe itself might have been a completely uncaused effect?
2) And, more broadly, if there can be uncaused effects, does that decisively sink once and forever the ancient notion that, "Something cannot come from nothing"?
Thanks for your patience.
I suppose one always has to play safe and say that "according to observation", radioactive decay is uncaused. So far as I know, all that means is that "it just happens", i.e. seemingly randomly and that we have no model to account for decay in terms of any influence. But if someone more knowledgeable can say there are theoretical reasons to expect it to be uncaused, i.e. truly random, then I'll be glad to learn.
I don't think myself that radioactive decay being uncaused tells us anything about the origin of the universe, save for what you imply in (2), viz. radioactive decay sets at least a precedent for apparently uncaused phenomena.