🚀 go-pugleaf

rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:

>>  [Definition of determinism:]
>>    `The theory that the state of a system at some time and the  rela-
>>  tions governing the  time development of  the system determine,  un-
>>  ambiguously, the state of  the system at any  later time.

>This definition presupposes that "the state of a system at some time"
>has meaning.  According to relativity, the notion of simultaneity is
>dependent upon the observer.

I don't think that relativity is at all incompatible with determinism.
Of course, there are an infinite number of ways to assign times to
space-time events, but you can always state determinism as follows:

    The universe is deterministic if for *every* time assignment to
    space-time points, and for every time t (according to that
    assignment), the state of the universe at time t uniquely determines
    the state at times t'>t.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY