I'd just like to point out that when you write of what you call scientific truth and say, "... [it] works best of all, because it fits the physical world so well..." you are tactily using a stronger notion of truth: correspondence to the way things are. How else could you defend that it is a better fit?
No undetected eavesdropping
on
Stop, Light.
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· Score: 1
It is possible to have quantum crypto systems where eavesdropping will always (i.e., at any desired level of security) be detected. Here's an intro article that explains this:
http://www.qubit.org/intros/crypt.html
One argument for free software is that it makes for better software than closed software. This is a very good argument, and I have no doubt that you agree with it. However, you argue that there is a more important sense in which software is free. The argument for this more important sense of freedom depends on some notion of the fundamental rights of humans that gets invoked when you compare free software to free speech. On the face of it, this can be a little confusing because software is very different from speech in many ways. What you seem to need is some principle that people ought to always retain control over the products generated by their labor. However, this is not a principle that is at work in general in our society. (Note that I am not defending the state of our society, I am describing it.) So, in your defense of free software are you depending on this principle that people ought to always retain control over the products generated by their labor? Or, do you have an argument other than this which I have missed?
I don't want to claim that there is no relation between the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (more precisely, the structure of non-commuting observables in quantum mechanics) and determinism, however I do want claim that nothing like a "death blow to scientific determinism" has been dealt. Briefly, the reason is that the determinism, at least in the realm of physics, is best understood as a thesis about how physical systems evolve. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says nothing about the evolution of the system. Depending on your interpretation of quantum mechanics, it says something about (1) which properties of the system can be determinate at a given time, or (2) which measurements can be made simultaneously on the system. (n.b. A property is determinate when it is a physical magnitude, say spin in a given direction, with a definite value, say up.) There is nothing in this about whether the system evolves deterministically or nondeterministically. So while there may well be a connection between determism and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, it is neither obvious nor easy to make.
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I'd just like to point out that when you write of what you call scientific truth and say, "... [it] works best of all, because it fits the physical world so well..." you are tactily using a stronger notion of truth: correspondence to the way things are. How else could you defend that it is a better fit?
It is possible to have quantum crypto systems where eavesdropping will always (i.e., at any desired level of security) be detected. Here's an intro article that explains this: http://www.qubit.org/intros/crypt.html
One argument for free software is that it makes for better software than closed software. This is a very good argument, and I have no doubt that you agree with it. However, you argue that there is a more important sense in which software is free. The argument for this more important sense of freedom depends on some notion of the fundamental rights of humans that gets invoked when you compare free software to free speech. On the face of it, this can be a little confusing because software is very different from speech in many ways. What you seem to need is some principle that people ought to always retain control over the products generated by their labor. However, this is not a principle that is at work in general in our society. (Note that I am not defending the state of our society, I am describing it.) So, in your defense of free software are you depending on this principle that people ought to always retain control over the products generated by their labor? Or, do you have an argument other than this which I have missed?
I don't want to claim that there is no relation between the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (more precisely, the structure of non-commuting observables in quantum mechanics) and determinism, however I do want claim that nothing like a "death blow to scientific determinism" has been dealt. Briefly, the reason is that the determinism, at least in the realm of physics, is best understood as a thesis about how physical systems evolve. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says nothing about the evolution of the system. Depending on your interpretation of quantum mechanics, it says something about (1) which properties of the system can be determinate at a given time, or (2) which measurements can be made simultaneously on the system. (n.b. A property is determinate when it is a physical magnitude, say spin in a given direction, with a definite value, say up.) There is nothing in this about whether the system evolves deterministically or nondeterministically. So while there may well be a connection between determism and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, it is neither obvious nor easy to make.