Predictability Problems in Physics

[nwrickert (Neil Rickert)]

@dga471

In the classical picture, in principle most things exactly follow Newtonian mechanics and we would be able to predict it if we had enough computing power.

You would also need the initial conditions for everything, or conditions at some starting point from which we could begin computing.

@dga471

In other words, even if Newtonian mechanics assumes determinism (except for the edge cases), we have not proven that nature follows it exactly.

I’m inclined to disagree with that.

Newton’s mechanics is itself deterministic. But I don’t think there’s a required assumption of determinism.

I remember struggling with this several decades ago. The world does not look deterministic, even if only because human behavior does not look deterministic. I eventually came to a way of understanding Newton’s mechanics which did not imply determinism.