-1

It is implied, per QM, that the behavior of subatomic particles cannot be precisely predicted. However, these indeterministic effects do have defined probabilities. By the law of large numbers, they can “average” out and result in approximately deterministic laws.

For this reason, I presume, we can predict with pinpoint accuracy whether or not atleast some kinds of events will happen in the macro scale even if we can’t know their minute details on a subatomic level.

The question then is how fine or loose grained of an event is predictable given all knowledge about antecedent conditions. And how antecedent must these conditions be?

Suppose I woke up today at 9 AM and ate toast for breakfast. If I were to know everything that could be possibly known about the configuration of the universe right after the Big Bang, is this event predictable? Can one say, given that knowledge, with assuredness whether or not this will happen?

2 Answers2

1

When thinking about the entirety of the Universe in terms of QM you will very quickly run into paradoxes. That's why I don't think we are at a point when your question can be meaningfully answered. For instance, the Universe is by definition a closed system (there is nothing else but it). So it must be in a pure state. Therefore its entropy must be zero ${\it always}$. How does this agree with the Second Law, the most obvious physical law out there?

John
  • 4,287
1

I can't help but think of such things as the weather and the large amounts of money spent on hardware and software. In the UK the BBC spent £1.1 Billion on a supercomputer project. This is, of course only one project.

Wikipedia (Numerical weather prediction) says “Manipulating the vast datasets and performing the complex calculations necessary to modern numerical weather prediction requires some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.”

It is difficult to predict short-range forecasts though it is easier than looking at the longer range which gets so much harder. We are only talking of days and weeks.

Your question spans approximately 14 billion years. Thinking about this on a QM scale would involve an inordinate amount of variables and calculations. Our present skills and understanding of maths and physics (QM) seem to fall far short of being able to compute such a problem.

DrJay
  • 705