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Comment by whatshisface | Hacker News Reader

Chaos isn't interpreted in physics, it's defined in physics, and it happens to be deterministic by definition. Many chaotic systems have already been "unraveled in to deterministic systems," including the double pendulum and weather models.

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My philosophy is everything is deterministic and how I wrote the above illustrates that with my expression of the word chaos. I don't understand your point?

In this context, a non-deterministic system is stochastic. That means there's an inherent random probability in the behavior. Chaos has no "chance"; you get the same result with the same initial conditions.

I agree with all that and I'm still confused to why the original commenter suggests my interpretation is incorrect to how I phrased chaos.

To break down the original sentence, "it describes a system that is too complicated at the current moment in time to unravel into a deterministic system," it implies that chaotic systems are not already "unraveled" into deterministic ones. The reality is that chaotic systems are all already deterministic by definition, and in fact many of them are completely "unravelled" (insofar as the equations that govern them are known.)

No, I never once implied chaos systems are not already unraveled into a deterministic one.

Me writing, "it describes a system that is too complicated at the current moment in time to unravel into a deterministic system" uses the word "unravel" as how humans are incapable of understanding all the cause & effects in the current moment of time; when they define it as chaos but may eventually be able to understand all the cause & effects.

I have no understanding to why you wrote your last paragraph in the original comment to me and how the comments transpired from then to now; other than you have a fragile ego to how I prefer to use my expression of the word chaos.

The last paragraph was written because of the use of the phrase "to me," in the original comment, motivating a defense of why it is a good idea to use what the word means to physicists, as opposed to what it means to other groups.

As you said, “it’s just a word,” and words can have several meanings. This is just one example: you gave a definition of chaos “in your philosophy,” but arguing about definitions (and philosophies) is usually pointless.

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