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Article 4902 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: lookup tables again
Message-ID: <1992Apr03.170149.39582@spss.com>
Date: 3 Apr 92 17:01:49 GMT
References: <1992Apr1.011348.11035@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> <1992Apr01.204057.28962@spss.com> <1992Apr3.092019.27965@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
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In article <1992Apr3.092019.27965@ccu.umanitoba.ca> zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca 
(Antun Zirdum) writes (quoting me):
>>I don't think this is correct.  For one thing, it's not known if space is
>>quantized, so positions may still be real numbers.  And I don't think
>>it's known that time is quantized, either.  For that matter, the universe
>>can't be a FSA if it's not deterministic, can it?
>
>Ok, I'll bite again. Why can't the universe be REAL and
>deterministic.  I think that you overstepped in your
>conclusion that being based on real numbers somehow
>escapes determinism.  To me this does not seem to follow [....]

I wasn't saying that the existence of real quantities precludes determinism.
I was making two separate objections to the idea that the universe is a
FSA: 1) that real quantities exist, so we are dealing with infinities
after all; and 2) that the universe isn't deterministic.

Why do I say that?  Oh, the famous two-slit experiment.  There's no way
to tell where on the screen the electron will end up.  All you get is
probabilities.  


