[OT] "Pre-announcement" of Python-based "computing appliance" project.

[Jeff Shannon]

Ville Vainio wrote:

>>>>>>"Richard" == Richard Hanson <me at privacy.net> writes:
>>>>>>            
>>>>>>
>
>    Richard> undecidable things left unsaid for now. It is a commonly
>    Richard> accepted thesis that the universe is evolving following
>    Richard> some, possibly ultimately unknowable, immutable set of
>    Richard> laws. Humans *do* seem to do
>
>Is it? For some reason or another, many seem to believe that quantum
>mechanics provides some blissfull exit from the immutable set of laws
>(and deterministic universe). It's a place where God throws dice every
>time a particle hits another.
>  
>

Ah, but quantum mechanics are still a (supposedly) immutable set of laws 
-- they are nondeterministic laws, to be sure, but that doesn't prevent 
them from being laws.  Quantum uncertainty follows a specific set of 
rules, even if we haven't figured out what all of those rules are, and 
even if those rules are expressed in probabilities.  If one were to 
believe that the universe did not follow an immutable (or nearly so) set 
of laws, then one would also necessarily believe that science is 
pointless, since the purpose of science is to try to figure out the laws 
by which the universe operates.  God may throw dice, but if we're 
careful we can reconstruct the rules of the game He's playing.  :)
 
Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International