# Predictability Problems in Physics

**URL:** <https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/predictability-problems-in-physics/1572>\
**Category:** Side Conversation\
**Created:** [September 9, 2018, 3:04am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/predictability-problems-in-physics/1572 "2018-09-09T03:04:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4

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**Author:** ![dga471](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/dga471/32/5233_2.png) [@dga471](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/dga471)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2018, 8:51pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/predictability-problems-in-physics/1572/4 "2018-09-09T20:51:32Z")

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Thanks, this is very insightful. Can you explain a little bit more on the following:

> [@Do Heat Seeking Missiles Have Teleology?](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/do-heat-seeking-missiles-have-teleology/1552/22):
>
> For example, in special relativity, it is impossible to get the initial conditions required to evolve the system.

Can you give examples of such systems with indeterminable initial conditions? When learning SR, we often encounter solve standard kinematics problems that give us the relative velocities and positions of the objects in the system, which are enough to fully determine their trajectories in space-time. In that way I can’t see anything philosophically interesting about SR compared to classical physics with regards to determinism. So I suppose you are referring to something more complicated than this?

> [@Do Heat Seeking Missiles Have Teleology?](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/do-heat-seeking-missiles-have-teleology/1552/19):
>
> Classical mechanics: Has determinism problem without SR

Can you explain on this as well? In the traditional Newtonian machine-like picture of the world as I understood it in principle everything ultimately proceeds from simple kinematics. [Laplace’s demon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon) is an illustration of this principle.

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