>That is exactly what happens inside a laser according to all present theories including QMs.

Not according to the Nobel laureate inventor of the maser himself:

"The maser does not inform one about the energy or frequency of any specific, clearly identified molecule. When a molecule is stimulated to radiate (in contrast with being left to radiate spontaneously) it must produce exactly the same frequency as the stimulating radiation. In addition, the radiation in a maser oscillator represents the average of a large number of molecules working together. Each individual molecule remains anonymous, not accurately measured or tracked."

You're claiming Charles Townes is wrong?

>The coin toss statement has nothing to do with the CI of QM.

It has everything to do with coin tosses, which is what you were talking about when you wrote, "Of course you can know the initial condition of a coin flip. What nonsense." My last post was in response to that.

You can read about Alfred Landé here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Land...

Seems he supported the Copenhagen Interpretation at first and then vigorously challenged it later, though his own take on it is still considered a "minority interpretation."

See, also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_in...

>No, but there are certain fundamental principles.

"Fundamental" doesn't mean "unique to."

Lots of philosophical outlooks grasp and concede the logical axiom of identity.

It might be necessary to concede that "A is A" to count oneself an Objectivist, but it certainly isn't sufficient.

>Nonsense. The stimulated photon has to "know" the state of the stimulating photon to align in energy, time, phase and polarity or you do not end up with coherent light, i.e,. a laser

A sweet example of "fallacy of division." Because something happens to aggregates and populations, we can make certain statements regarding what occurs to individuals within that population.

No we can't. We can't even legitimately do that, from a mathematical perspective, in the field of health insurance.

Remonstrate all you want. I'll side with the inventor of the maser on this one (mainly because I think he's right).

>In dice throwing it is the lack of knowledge (not understanding) of the initial conditions and the assumption that they are random.

A distinction without a difference. What applies to a coin toss (with two possibilities) applies to a fair die (with six).

Even if you both knew and understood ***all*** causes operative on a toss resulting in a 1, a 2, a 3, a 4, a 5, and a 6, that still presents the problem that once you toss the die, either the 1-causal-chain, or the 2-causal-chain, or the 3-causal-chain . . . etc. will become operative. So while the ***outcome*** of a 1, a 2, a 3, etc., could be determined wit 100% certainty once the die moves from equilibrium and is being shaken in a fist or a cup, the probability of which beginning point is still indeterminate; it is still 1/6.

And there will always be a 1/6 probability of some still earlier cause no matter how far back you push your observations.

The problem is not a practical one of knowledge acquisition, but epistemological . . . in fact, I believe it's a meeting point between epistemology and metaphysics, because that 1/6 probability is metaphysically intrinsic to the die/fist/cup/shaking/tossing/rolling system of events. It's not a physical attribute of the die (it's not some property of ivory or plastic when formed into a cube with dots or indents stamped on it); but it is metaphysically intrinsic in the relations among the various elements of the system.

>Of course you can know the initial condition of a coin flip. What nonsense.

You know something, DB? What you lack in patience and diligence in grasping another's arguments, you more than make up for in charm. A pleasure.

Once more:

In theory (and perhaps even in practice), you can know with 100% certainty EITHER the causal chain whose cause/effect/cause/effect links always end in heads, OR the causal chain whose cause/effect/cause/effect links always end in tails. ONCE the chain starts! But WHICH causal chain becomes operative in any given toss is STILL describable ONLY by a statement of probability: 50% for the heads-causal-chain, 50% for the tails-causal-chain.

And if you intentionally bias the toss, so that you can predict with 100% certainty the outcome (e.g., you put the coin in a special machine insulated from all vibration, etc., and you have such control over all conditions inside that artificial environment, that you can predict with 100% certainty that each mechanical toss will result in a result of heads)? What then? That changes nothing. In fact, that's simply an admission that there is, in fact, a 2nd causal chain — starting somewhere — whose result will be tails, which you are simply preventing from occurring.

Get it? No?

Try this, then:

You have a device that exercises such environmental control over your coin tosses, that you can predict with 100% certainty the result can only be heads.

I have a similar device that exercises such environmental control over my coin tosses, that I can predict with 100% certainty the result can only be tails.

Both machines are owned by The University of Objectivism to which we both belong. Because of scheduling issues only one machine or the other can be switched on operated. How do we decide which machine should be turned on?

How 'bout we flip a coin and decide fairly?

See the problem? Even though both machines give determinate results, the causal chain that turns on one machine rather than the other still starts off indeterminately and therefore its result cannot be determined in advance.

Each machine precludes one of those causal chains from "getting a foothold," which is why it always results in one or the other result; but when both causal chains "compete fairly" from the get-go — as they do when we flip to see who gets laboratory time with his own machine— then we see that the 50/50 probability describes an intrinsic relation among the elements of a system. It doesn't represent a "placeholder" for ultimate determinate knowledge.

Review "Lande's Blade" gedanken experiment with billiard balls. You'll see that no matter how closely you examine the causal elements of a system, the most you can do is push back the indeterminacy by another step; you can't expunge it entirely because indeterminacy is intrinsic to how the elements interact causally with one another.

>Unless you agree with everything Objectivism says you cannot be an Objectivist? This is a religion?

Bingo. I suspect that in DB's case, he more sensitive to whether or not people agree with *him* than whether or not they understand the logical axiom of "A is A." Some posters have already denied that in earlier threads, yet DB remained silent. He wants posters to agree with him that Bohr, Heisenberg, and Von Neumann were wrong (even though they weren't), that they denied a maser/laser device could exist in principle (even though they didn't), that the maser/laser demonstrates the incorrectness of the uncertainty principle (even though it doesn't), and that Charles Townes reported that some big names in quantum physics were in denial over the whole thing (which he didn't, or at any rate, he provided a much fuller context of what actually happened, giving the lie to the notion that they simply denied the whole thing).

By the way, I'm sure you know that your rhetorical question has been leveled as an actual accusation against Objectivism by others in the past (e.g., Albert Ellis, to name just one), as well as the accusation that there's something anti-scientific about Objectivism. Not anti-technology, per doe, but anti-theoretical science. This might explain why there are so few Objectivists who actually become theoretical scientists.

I think there might be something to that accusation.

>A is A is fundamental to Objectivists.

I keep trying to tell that to some of the posters here. But they keep asserting that "identities change" (i.e., A becomes not-A) just because some of the attributes of A change.

>If you don't think that is correct then you are not an Objectivist - period

You forget that lots of philosophies have held, and continue to hold, that "A is A", not just Objectivism.

But what does any of this have to do with your misunderstanding of Townes, his invention, and the uncertainty principle?

And what strident words have you for those on this board calling themselves Objectivists, yet who post that "A can change into not-A"?

>the first photon has to align

The what?

You can't say anything about "first" photons. You can't count individual photons, track them, and make any knowledge claims about them.

Townes himself admitted that in the excerpt above:

"In addition, the radiation in a maser oscillator represents the ***average of a large number of molecules working together.*** Each individual molecule remains anonymous [NB: ANONYMOUS! THAT MEANS THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE ORDINAL NAMES LIKE "FIRST", "SECOND", "THIRD", ETC.], not accurately measured or tracked. The maser's precision from principles that mollify the apparent demands of the uncertainty principle . . ."

Townes invented the maser. I'll take his word on this.

The quantum theorist Alfred Lande illustrated this in his famous thought-experiment today known as "Lande's Blade". It's similar to coin flips but a bit clearer to visualize, I think. The experiment consists of a long hollow tube (the diameter of a billiard ball) at a 45-degree incline. At the lower end of the tube's opening, and precisely in the middle of the hole's diameter, is a large metal razor blade. On either side of the blade is a basket (one on the right, one on the left). The experimenter inserts a heavy billiard ball into the top opening of the tube. It rolls down the tube, encounters the blade when exiting the lower end, and becomes unstable, having a propensity to fall into the right basket or the left basket with equal probability. After rolling enough billiard balls down the tube, we expect to find about half of them in the right basket and half in the left.

What applied to the coin flips above, applies to the billiard / tube / blade system in this thought experiment. Even if we can know everything about the initial spin, speed, acceleration, etc., etc. of the ball as it enters the tube; and even if we can know everything about the various forces it encounters at the tube exit, and when it hits the blade, and even if, knowing all this, we can predict with 100% certainty which basket any ball will fall into, we've simply pushed back the 50/50 probability to an earlier step: we still have the "John" initial condition (determining a right-basket landing) and a "Mary" initial condition (determining a left-basket landing) occurring with 50/50 probability.

>you can determine whether it will land on heads or tails exactly.

But that doesn't allow you to replace a probabilistic description of coin flips with a deterministically exact one! Because (to repeat) even IF you know "John" (and all its successive links) or "Mary" (and all its successive links) with 100% certainty, that still cannot explain why, in any given flip, the "John" chain or the "Mary" chain becomes operative. Again, the most you can say is that "John" and "Mary" will occur randomly, each causal chain with 50% probability.

>For instance, if you know all the initial conditions of a coin flip,

Except that you cannot know "all" the initial conditions of a coin flip, because the initial conditions recede backward in time — effect back to its cause; effect back to its cause; effect back to its cause; ad infinitum — in an infinite regress. Yes, you'd have to claim omniscience to find that "first" cause setting the whole thing in motion. Furthermore, since a fair coin has a "heads" side and a "tails" side on which it will land on one 50% of the time in a great number of flips, your tracing of the deterministic/mechanist chain backward in time would have to concede that there must be TWO basic starting points, each one determining ONE of those causal chains: one causal chain inevitably determines a "heads" outcome, the second causal chain inevitably determines a "tails" outcome. For the sake of humor, let's name the initial condition of the causal chain resulting in a heads result "John", and the initial condition of the causal chain resulting in a tails result "Mary." (Once more so you're clear on this: "John" determines a heads result; "Mary" determines a tails result.)

Great. But that still doesn't solve the problem of knowing "all" the initial conditions, because when we flip the coin, it still lands 50% of the time "heads" and 50% of the time "tails." So although we can trace "heads" to a "John" starting point, and "tails" to a "Mary" starting point, we must now assign a 50% chance of occurrence to the "John" initial condition and a 50% to the "Mary" initial condition! Sure, once we see that a "John" initial condition is operative, we can determine the outcome with a probability of "1", and likewise for the "Mary" starting point; but the question becomes "Why did "John" become operative in a given flip and not "Mary"? So, obviously, "John" and "Mary" must themselves NOT be ultimate starting causes, but they are merely effects of some still earlier initial conditions. As you can see, this still merely pushes back the 50/50 probability back another step.

In sum:

If you think of a causal chain as, metaphorically, an actual material chain, in which each link is an effect of a cause represented by a preceding link, stretching back until we get to the pure "initial conditions" that determine each successive link of the chain, it follows that in a fair coin flip, the "heads" causal chain and the "tails" causal chain recede into the temporal distance to earlier and still earlier causes, but they NEVER MEET. There are always two initial conditions: the "John" condition (resulting inevitably in "heads") and the "Mary" condition (resulting inevitably in "tails"), and no matter how far back you push the analysis, there will always be a 50% chance of the "John" condition occurring and a 50% chance of the "Mary" condition occurring.

So you've determined the end result — the heads or the tails — with 100% certainty, but not the causes of the heads or the tails (John or Mary) with 100% certainty. And this would be true irrespective of how far back you recede causally behind "John" and "Mary."

Another way of stating this is that at no time can you, in principle, substitute the probabilistic description of certain events with a deterministic one. All you can do is replace one probabilistic description (i.e., heads occur 50% of the time, tails occur 50% of the time) with another probabilistic description (i.e., John occurs 50% of the time, Mary occurs 50% of the time). The substitute might be a better description than the original one, but it is still non-determinate, because in principle, it cannot be.

This uncertainty — Popper calls it "propensity" — is intrinsic to systems whose individual parts interact causally with one another (which is to say, all systems), and is not a lack of knowledge. The elements of these systems interact causally with one another in an inherently probabilistic or statistical manner, and not in a mechanistically determinate one.