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To: js1138
Careful there, js. If you are saying that because we cannot observe causal relationships in activity on a certain level, next thing you will be saying is that gaps in transitional fossil records is a proof that those changes never happened.

See what I mean? Absence of proof or absence of observable evidence is not the same thing as proving the obverse. That was where my earlier quip about shooting pool with Hume came from. The fact that no one "observes" causality doesn't mean it is not there. It is just not observable. If this is true in one area of data collection and observation it is true in the others. We know a LOT more about activity on a subatomic level than back when I was in school, but there is also alot we don't know. It is safer to say with Heisenberg that we disturb stuff simply by observing it so that no clear causal links can be observed on a quantum level. Just my opinion.

552 posted on 12/08/2005 3:59:55 PM PST by chronic_loser
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To: chronic_loser
It is safer to say with Heisenberg that we disturb stuff simply by observing it so that no clear causal links can be observed on a quantum level. Just my opinion.

I'm not claiming to have TRUTH here. I am claiming that given the current state of physics, it is not reasonable to say that all phenomena are caused. It is up to skeptics of quantum theory to demonstrate causation.

558 posted on 12/08/2005 4:06:57 PM PST by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: chronic_loser
...It is safer to say with Heisenberg that we disturb stuff simply by observing it ...

That isn't exactly what Heisenberg said. The dispersion relations hold even if the "observer" isn't sentinent; maybe it's only a crystal. There are also observations that don't disturb the object.

626 posted on 12/08/2005 8:21:04 PM PST by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch ist der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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