Anurag Jain's Blog on Bangalore Events, Travel, IIM Bangalore, IIM, IIMB, Management

Saturday, September 25, 2004

Posted 11:15 AM by Anurag

I Do Not Play Dice

What are your favourite sig lines? I have earlier used in my mails/written communications:
# Hasta la victoria siempre. - Che Guevera's war-cry slogan, which roughly translated means 'Never stop until you're finished' or 'Fight till victory' -
# "Sometimes I think that the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." - Calvin and Hobbes -

These days I am using: I Do Not Play Dice. Am sure you would recall Einstein-ian connection immediately here as its a slight twist of the famous quote by the fampus scientist. A little more gyaan behind using this quote follows (mots of it put together from this brilliant PBS documentary: The Elegant Universe).

Well, you see, in 1920s, a new breed of physicists (Quantam Mechanics Physicists) led by Niels Bohr started looking at atomic behaviour in a very different, in fact, outlandish light. Quantum mechanics says that you can't know for certain the outcome of any experiment; you can only assign a certain probability to the outcome of any experiment. They essentially said that the atomic behaviour is 'random'. This new physics was in direct conflict to what the theories of the day including Einstein's, had preached so far. Einstein, of course, didn't like this. He never lost faith that the universe behaves in a certain and predictable way. The idea that all we can do is calculate the odds, that things will turn out one way or another was something Einstein deeply resisted. Yet, experiment after experiment showed Einstein was wrong and that quantum mechanics really does describe how the world works at the subatomic level.

So, in order to discredit this new stream of physics (Quantam physics), Einstein used to say "God does not throw dice" suggesting that atomic level behaviour is quite orderly (and not random) as encapsulated in his theories.

Guess, you can see now where I am going with the modification of this quote in my signature line now. ;)

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