[2012-Jul-13] Pseudorandom

[Matt]

Hello everybody,

I have a question about this comic:

Second drawing (With the graph) it says: "We were too macroscopic to access quantum randomness, so we didn't meet sufficient conditions for deterministic choices"

But, deterministic physics happens precisely at a macro-scale, no? It should be the fact that we have a machine giving access to smaller levels that makes our choices non-deterministic, not the opposite

I don't really understand what this comic is trying to say, anyway...

Can somebody help?

[Lethal Interjection]

Can somebody help?

Nope.

[GUTCHUCKER]

Sorry, but no!

[Sahan]

Well I'm sure somebody could, if they really wanted to. But no.

Even at the macroscopic level, observables like position and momentum cannot both be determined precisely due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle, so it isn't truly deterministic. But at such a large scale, the uncertainty due to even the most precise of measurement devices is far greater than this quantum-level uncertainty, so it is effectively ignored.