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All Murray Gell-Mann Quotes
Of course the word chaos is used in rather a vague sense by a lot of writers, but in physics it means a particular phenomenon, namely that in a nonlinear system the outcome is often indefinitely, arbitrarily sensitive to tiny changes in the initial condition.
Murray Gell-Mann
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Our planet doesn't seem to be the result of anything very special.
Murray Gell-Mann
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The chaos can act as a magnifier of quantum fluctuations so that they can produce sizable effects in the world around us. But we know that that can happen often.
Murray Gell-Mann
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Sometimes the probabilities are very close to certainties, but they're never really certainties.
Murray Gell-Mann
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What I try to do in the book is to trace the chain of relationships running from elementary particles, fundamental building blocks of matter everywhere in the universe, such as quarks, all the way to complex entities, and in particular complex adaptive system like jaguars.
Murray Gell-Mann
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But I don't actually adopt the point of view that our subjective impression of free will, which is a kind of indeterminacy behavior, comes from quantum mechanical indeterminacy.
Murray Gell-Mann
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Planets are too dim to be detected with existing equipment, far away, except in these very special circumstances where they're seen by their gravitational effect.
Murray Gell-Mann
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So the old Copenhagen interpretation needs to be generalized, needs to be replaced by something that can be used for the whole universe, and can be used also in cases where there is plenty of individuality and history.
Murray Gell-Mann
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Well, I don't like to get involved in these philosophical issues very much.
Murray Gell-Mann
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We are driven by the usual insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game.
Murray Gell-Mann
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Now, what that means is that there is fundamental indeterminacy from quantum mechanics, but besides that there are other sources of effective indeterminacy.
Murray Gell-Mann
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If someone says that he can think or talk about quantum physics without becoming dizzy, that shows only that he has not understood anything whatever about it.
Murray Gell-Mann
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Enthusiasm is followed by disappointment and even depression, and then by renewed enthusiasm.
Murray Gell-Mann
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In fact any experiment that measures a quantum effect is one in which the quantum effect is aligned with the behavior of some heavy, macroscopic object; that's how we measure it.
Murray Gell-Mann
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