Originally Posted By: tsuwm
from the back of the room:

Objection, Your Honor! I know a little sometin' about billiards, and while it has a bit of determinism about it, I wouldn't go callin' it strictly deterministic (ever tried to predict reactions to English on the cue ball?) - not like, say, your computer is deterministic.


Just because you can't predict what is going to happen doesn't mean it isn't deterministic. It just means that you are incapable of perceiving all the little factors that are doing the determining. And interesting you should contrast the determinicity of billiards to that of a computer. Anyone who has done any work with large computer programs will know how unpredictable something completely deterministic can be. That's why they have people debugging those programs. Even when they look like they're working nice and predictably they send out beta versions to crowd-source the bug hunting.