How determined are you?

Hi ianoWhen I suggested a thread on determinism, I didn't mean to see you besieged with multiple responses. So I'll keep this short. Others have already commented that there are reasons to doubt that we really live in a wholly determined universe.Boyle's law applies exactly to ideal gasses. But real gasses are not ideal. Hooke's law applies exactly to ideally elastic materials. But real materials are not ideally elastic.Many of our scientific laws are deterministic, because deterministic laws are easier to work with. But our laws do not completely and exactly describe the world. There is plenty of room for indeterminism to be present.Roughly speaking, determinism is the thesis that if we could rewind the tape, and play it all over again, the exact same things would happen. We never can rewind and replay the tape. And therefore there never could be certain evidence of determinism or of indeterminism.For myself, I don't believe we live in a deterministic world. I am skeptical of predestination. I am skeptical of the claim that God can foreknow the future.

The idea that determinism still allows free will is known as compatibilism. I vacillate over that. But knowing the future is a little stronger than determinism, and I don't see how to square that with free will. I see Newcomb's paradox as creating a serious problem for that. This has been long debated (as the theology of predestination). But I can't square it with Newcomb's paradox.

I think many physicists take that view. I guess I once thought that way.Currently, I don't think of GR as a description of the cosmos. Rather, I think of it as a framework we can use when describing parts of the cosmos and when theorizing about the cosmos.

You don't have to respond to every post. This is a philosophical question, for which we cannot expect a scientific answer.There is the old question - are scientific laws prescriptive or descriptive?My own view is that the laws are our inventions. The universe is not obliged to follow them. We come up with the best account we can, but it might not be exactly correct.One possibility is that the universe is made up of lots of tiny bundles of energy, that are all independent actors. In that case, the apparent regularity we see in the universe is a matter of statistical trends, and the laws need not be exact.

I'm definitely not a new-ager. However, I really cannot firm it up. I hesitated on the word "energy" since it isn't the right term. But the right term doesn't exist.My basic view is that science does not and could not describe the actual world. It gives us approximations that idealize the world, and are adequate for making good (but imperfect) predictions.Once upon a time, matter was composed of indivisible units, called atoms. Then we divided the atoms. Then we divided the components.We can't divide the quarks because we are at the limit of our resolution. But who is to say that they are indivisible.

What, exactly, is the meaning of "observe"? What are these "laws of nature"? In my opinion, they are not really laws of nature at all. We just use that term. These laws are human inventions. We construct them so that we can describe the world in ways that are good (if imperfect) approximations.