Does Randomness Exist? Evolution & Implicate Order

[mosassam]

The opening statement of this thread concerns evolution. I am not familiar with 'bounded' randomness (as I am a total layman here) and this may well be a gigantic leap in the wrong direction, but, applying 'bounded' randomness to evolution could we say that there do occur random mutations but in the whole evolution is somehow determined. This opens the door for the God Squad but I refer back to the original post and the concept, put forward by David Bohm, that implicate order guides the evolution of explicate order. It may also be the case that these mutations, which occur on a quantum/genetic level are not as 'random' as they initially appear.
I must stress I'm not laying any law down here, or personal belief, I'm just trying to open up some avenues of exploration to gain understanding in a subject I know very little about.

Any views on this, anyone?? Let's get this thread moving.

 

[raolduke]

Randomness only exists to human beings.. Just like everything else. Random only applies to human beings because man is the only creature that uses advanced thought process. We are the only creature that expects things; things that surprise us have a very low probability to happen or weren't even taken into consideration. If you want to know what random is read the bible - the only random decision a conscious being could make, (to say that he does exist, and to say that he is conscious) aka. God, would to create a monkey and to have them spend portions of their lives on an electronic hellhole discussing nothing. I take all of that back if any of you are published authors.. my hat is off to you guys that do that.

 

[out of whack]

This opens the door for the God Squad

And they have just send in a rep. See what you've done!

Ok, let me volunteer my interpretation of randomness. I share the point of view that it relates to a lack of information, and I also add that it can also relate to a lack of information processing ability to predict an outcome before the outcome occurs. In short, I consider randomness to be an inability to predict an outcome. What is random to one may not be random to another, depending on available information and processing power. The outcome of a pseudo-random generator is usually predictable just by using a faster machine, for example. And, in spite of deterministic causes, the weather remains random/unpredictable because we are unable to process all information in a timely manner.

This interpretation stands in contrast to what some call "true randomness", a concept which suggests that no possible amount of information and processing power would be sufficient to determine a "truly random" outcome. Of course, if you assume that the same causes must always lead to the same effect, then so-called "true randomness" assumes that some effects are uncaused (another hot topic of debate). Otherwise it would be possible in theory to determine any outcome given knowledge of all initial causes and given sufficient processing power. The premise of true randomness appears to run counter to the premise of cause and effect.

 

[mosassam]

What is random to one may not be random to another, depending on available information and processing power.

So you would say that, given enough processing power, randomness would not exist?

then so-called "true randomness" assumes that some effects are uncaused (another hot topic of debate).

In a Newtonian sense, I believe causality can be transcended (non-locality), but I'm not sure whether this reveals randomness.

 

[out of whack]

So you would say that, given enough processing power, randomness would not exist?

I don't quite go this far because even given unlimited information and unlimited processing power, a "predicting device" still cannot predict its own outcome, it cannot tell what its prediction will be before it predicts it. Given this, you can always find some element of unpredictability somewhere in the universe. Since there is no way to predict absolutely everything then I conclude that randomness does exist, in the sense of my definition.

 

[moving finger]

From what i understand, "bounded" randomness can produce something very akin to determinism at different scales, so it sounds more plausible than absolute randomness.
By bounded randomness i mean for example a particle that at time t can move only within some radius, yet the exact position within that radius is random.

I don't see how one can provide indisputable evidence for any kind of randomness. In the case of the particle scenario above (for example) the most one can do is to show that the position of the particle within the given radius is not predictable using our current knowledge of the "laws of nature" - but this does not lead to the safe conclusion that the particle's position is necessarily random. It may simply be that the particle position is very uniquely determined, but our understanding of the "laws of nature" is inadequate...

The same argument can be applied to any empirical "evidence" of randomness (including quantum randomness).

Hence, any empirical evidence of randomness may be interpreted simply in terms of lack of predictability born of our inadequate understanding of the laws of nature.

IMHO, the reason why many people seem to want to cling on to the idea of genuine randomness is because this seems to be the only hope for any kind of "free will" - such persons are unfortunately (IMHO) misguided.

MF

 

[Royce]

I suggest that you read up on Quantum Physics and Dynamics. "In Search of Schroedinger's Cat" by John Gribbin as wells as "In Search of Schroedinger's Kittens" is a good place for the layman to start.

 

[triverse]

"Randomness" is a term that only has meaning when you provide a context. It basically means a lack of information. For example, if we know the state of every molecule in the universe at every point in time since the Big Bang, well those genetic mutations would not be random. But we don't know what sorts of chemicals those fish are going to bump into or what sorts of mistakes are going to happen in the copying of DNA, so we model that as a random process due to a lack of information.

Same deal with determinism. It's a term that only has validity if you consider the entire system of the universe from the dawn of time until the end of time. In that case, yes everything has been predetermined. But in the system of your life at this point in time, no. Too many uncertainties for you to say that your life has been predetermined.

Opposite and attraction can have random id's.+ and - are attracted due to there characteristics.I believe everything thing is based on characteristics.What makes this like this, and what makes this not like this ,but I also think there is a third element that can contadict what will most likely happen.I think if there was just a right/wrong,good/bad,yes/no there would be no since of time itself because of the lack of complex.Simple means done,nothing is ever done in our universe there is always interactions happening on the small and big scale.With just a plus and a minus with no sometimes there would be no movement.At the basic level of atoms still don't do what they are suppose to do every single time.With this random or if you want to call it unknown source it keeps things moving.That is why you cannot compute a universe because the and inttelegence made would know for sure what is was .In othere words just commands and no questions.Free-will could be the random ID,but you cannot just put this to humans or just living things, but all.

 

[babak462]

It depends on how you define randomness and what you mean by it.It also depends on your personal beliefs. Some evolutionists say that God doesn't exist because evolution was a random process and there were no intelligent behind it. Regardless of the existence of God,The randomness that they are looking for is physically impossible.Believing that randomness exist( the way they define it) is the same as believing in miracles of Moses or Jesus.If it was possible to break the laws of universe, then the miracles of these prophets were also physically possible. Before the beginning of time ( the big bang) there were no laws and if there were any laws they were different than the laws of universe because there was no time,and randomness was scientifically possible ,but life began long after the big bang.It began in our universe. I believe if we explore more and do more research to find the reason behind diversity we won't get to the point were every thing is random and and things are just happening for no reason. I think we will find great laws behind this diversity.Don't tell anyone that you heard it from me ,but both atheists and theists believe in miracles.

 

[Evo]

It depends on how you define randomness and what you mean by it.It also depends on your personal beliefs. Some evolutionists say that God doesn't exist because evolution was a random process and there were no intelligent behind it. Regardless of the existence of God,The randomness that they are looking for is physically impossible.Believing that randomness exist( the way they define it) is the same as believing in miracles of Moses or Jesus.If it was possible to break the laws of universe, then the miracles of these prophets were also physically possible. Before the beginning of time ( the big bang) there were no laws and if there were any laws they were different than the laws of universe because there was no time,and randomness was scientifically possible ,but life began long after the big bang.It began in our universe. I believe if we explore more and do more research to find the reason behind diversity we won't get to the point were every thing is random and and things are just happening for no reason. I think we will find great laws behind this diversity.Don't tell anyone that you heard it from me ,but both atheists and theists believe in miracles.

Exactly what is happening for no reason? Certainly you aren't referring to evolution.

 

[ThomasT]

The opening statement of this thread concerns evolution. I am not familiar with 'bounded' randomness (as I am a total layman here) and this may well be a gigantic leap in the wrong direction, but, applying 'bounded' randomness to evolution could we say that there do occur random mutations but in the whole evolution is somehow determined. This opens the door for the God Squad but I refer back to the original post and the concept, put forward by David Bohm, that implicate order guides the evolution of explicate order. It may also be the case that these mutations, which occur on a quantum/genetic level are not as 'random' as they initially appear.
I must stress I'm not laying any law down here, or personal belief, I'm just trying to open up some avenues of exploration to gain understanding in a subject I know very little about.

Randomness refers to unpredictability. So randomness exists. As for its relationship to the understanding of evolution and biodiversity, the underlying dynamic(s) governing mutation isn't known, and the occurance of any individual mutation is unpredictable. So mutation is said to occur randomly.

Whether wrt genetics or quantum experimental phenomena or whatever, unpredictability/randomness leads to probabilistic formulations and the production and processing of large statistical samples, which in turn reveals a certain predictability wrt the statistical trends of large samples of random individual events.

 

[a4mula]

I wish philosophers spent some time learning to program computers. If they did, they would understand that randomness cannot be achieved by any algorithm. And that implies it is absolutely impossible to describe randomness in any logical way.

Now if randomness can't be described, then we can't even establish if it exists. Whatever it is that we have in mind when we think of randomness, it's some form of determinism we don't yet understand. Which is why determinism is so attractive.

There is only one possibility for randomness to exist, and that is if the universe is incomprehensible. In other words, if the world is fundamentally random, then it is fundamentally mysterious and ultimately irrational.

While it's entirely correct that as it stands today it's impossible to create true random number generators in programming language it's quite another story to say that it doesn't exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_random_number_generator

These are devices that use radioactive decay (among other methods) to create a true random event. We use devices like this all across the world from mechanical lottery devices, online poker, pseudodata population ect.

Randomness occurs without a doubt. We put this topic to bed once QM superseded Newtonian Cause and Effect. The world is not a giant tumbling bed of already toppled dominoes. We live in a world where our observations take a direct action on wavefunction collapse. Events that were undetermined are determined once we take action on them. Predetermination is dead.

 

[Navigateur]

Randomness occurs without a doubt. We put this topic to bed once QM superseded Newtonian Cause and Effect. The world is not a giant tumbling bed of already toppled dominoes. We live in a world where our observations take a direct action on wavefunction collapse. Events that were undetermined are determined once we take action on them. Predetermination is dead.

I realize this poster may no longer be on here but this debate is still "alive" in the world so I thought I'd reply because I'm baffled.

I'm baffled because I can't believe there are still people who believe that actual "randomness" exists in the actual world. Let's take human behaviour as an example (because we're human beings). Is it total randomness that determines, for example, what sound we want in our ears at a given time? If the answer was yes, we would all simply listen to white noise all the time. Therefore the answer is no. At a given time our desire reflects something specific, a certain rhythm, harmony, structure, the nature of which only we can know at that time (what we want). Now let's imagine an "outside" (non-human) observer. Even if we were an absolutely proficient composer and performer, performing the exact music we wanted, live, and on the fly, that "outside" observer would not know what the hell we are doing and why. Our actions are based on our desires plus our understanding, but the "outside" observer can only use observable data and try to figure out patterns based on that data. Even for this example, have you ever actually looked at the waveform of a beatiful piece of music? It looks "all over" the place at a micro level. So the outside observer will be mystified. So, if human behaviour, which is based on desires and a person's state of understanding/beliefs, that we know we have, would be so difficult for an outside observer to decipher, why should we expect ANYTHING in the universe to be easy for US to decipher? It's actually remarkable that we do have some things that we can, such as gravity and electromagnetism, but to conclude that everything else is nondeterministic simply makes no sense. It can be useful to designate what is unknown by designating the extent of what we do know, and quantum formulae can be used to predict the range of what might happen, and nothing more, but to derive or imagine the existence of something as nonsensical as "randomness" beyond that simply has no foundation at all.

And then you might say "well if we can just use quantum formulae, and they work, then it doesn't really matter if actual randomness exists or not". Well, it DOES matter. It means you no longer have to explore anything beyond your/our understanding because it can just be labeled as "random". We become scientifically totally stagnant as a human race. Logic is no longer used because things are "just the way they are". That is quite frankly, and obviously, bunk. But it's worse than that. As soon as you stop asking "why", then all is lost. Don't you get it? This is serious. Wake up!

 

[Studiot]

So long as any system can have more than one state ( and the universe would be pretty boring if this were not true as it implies zero change) it is pretty easy to define randomness.

Take any state - it doesn't matter which one - and call it 'order'.
Every other available state is by definition 'random'.

This is a similar process to chosing an origin in maths or physics.

 

[Navigateur]

So long as any system can have more than one state ( and the universe would be pretty boring if this were not true as it implies zero change) it is pretty easy to define randomness.

Take any state - it doesn't matter which one - and call it 'order'.
Every other available state is by definition 'random'.

This is a similar process to chosing an origin in maths or physics.

Dear Studiot, members of a system have TENDENCIES, so their behaviour is not random. As individual beings, we know what we're going to do next, the people who know us extremely well MAY be able to predict this, to a limited degree, those who know us less well to an even less certain degree, "non-human" observers would have no idea, and so on. To ask why or NOT TO ASK WHY. That is the ONLY question in relation to randomness. If something is considered to have no further reasoning, it is "random". Randomness is the GIVING UP or ABDICATION of reasoning, and nothing more. It is the birth of scientific stagnation.

 

[Studiot]

As I understand the question it is not

Is everything random?

but

Is anything random?

The second does not preclude the option of some things some being random and some nonrandom.

You only need to point to one randon event to answer yes to the question, no matter how many non random events you can catalogue.

My offering presented a way of working with any randomness more precisely.

Have a nice day.

 

[fluidistic]

As individual beings, we know what we're going to do next, the people who know us extremely well MAY be able to predict this, to a limited degree

I completely disagree with this. There are random processes occurring in the brain which can be described by quantum mechanics. We do not have a control over it and hence we don't know what we'll do. Rather we could know what we will likely do.
Here is an article (http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_articles/other_people_know_you_better_you_do_study_shows) that shows that others know us better than we do, for some of our characteristics. Hence others can predict better some of our reactions to situations than we do.
I don't know enough quantum mechanics nor did I read the whole thread, but I believe it's generally assumed that a true randomness (i.e. something totally unpredictable, even knowing the maximum amount of information) exists in this theory. Until now, this theory hasn't been showed wrong in its range of accuracy.

 

[Navigateur]

I completely disagree with this. There are random processes occurring in the brain which can be described by quantum mechanics. We do not have a control over it and hence we don't know what we'll do. Rather we could know what we will likely do.
Here is an article (http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_articles/other_people_know_you_better_you_do_study_shows) that shows that others know us better than we do, for some of our characteristics. Hence others can predict better some of our reactions to situations than we do.
I don't know enough quantum mechanics nor did I read the whole thread, but I believe it's generally assumed that a true randomness (i.e. something totally unpredictable, even knowing the maximum amount of information) exists in this theory. Until now, this theory hasn't been showed wrong in its range of accuracy.

Dear fluidistic, your next decision is yours alone. You have COMPLETE knowledge of what it is, because you do it (I am talking about your IMMEDIATE next action). I'm not talking about anything outside of what you do. It's foundation is your desire and your state of understanding at that time. I'm not talking about you knowing why you have those desires. I don't even know if that'll ever be an important question.

Of course quantum formulae are useful in predicting a range of possible outcomes. Some take this as proof that randomness exists in reality. It does not prove that, and never can. I could produce a probablistic formula for any number of unknowns, and this would be backed up 100% by experimental data, because of course, the probablistic formula does not predict a precise outcome in the first place, just a range. The next question is, then, do we dare or bother to ask WHY a certain outcome happens rather than another outcome, or at least admit that we don't know the reason? Or, do we take a brazen leap of faith and assign a new force we call "randomness", which has zero foundation in logic. The second option closes that "why" question forever. Do we have any reason whatsoever to be that brazen about it? Of course if we are we've already stopped asking why, so scientific progress in that area is halted completely and forever (and only because of a leap of faith in something with no logical foundation!). Scientists should not take such unnecessary leaps of faith for no good reason.

 

[Tao-Fu]

We can only ever describe our observations. We cannot address ontological truth in any tangible way. I can only say that certain things appear random. Similarly, I can state that certain relationships permit a deterministic description. However, this determinism is a property of the description I have constructed, not necessarily of reality itself. You cannot prove determinism any more than you can prove randomness (you can only observe that certain events have arbitrarily high levels of correlation with each other).

 

[fluidistic]

Dear fluidistic, your next decision is yours alone. You have COMPLETE knowledge of what it is, because you do it (I am talking about your IMMEDIATE next action). I'm not talking about anything outside of what you do.

Hi Navigateur, I share a different viewpoint. However I agree that if you've done something on purpose, i.e. knowing that you would do it, then yes you had the control over yourself and the decision was yours. But it is not always the case. What if my next action is an involuntary movement? What if it was caused by a quantum effect of say a flow of electrons in the brain or whatever? It was my next action, however I didn't control it nor was it my decision to move.

It's foundation is your desire and your state of understanding at that time. I'm not talking about you knowing why you have those desires. I don't know if we'll ever even need to know that.

In the case of involuntary movement, this is false.

Of course quantum formulae are useful in predicting a range of possible outcomes. Some take this as proof that randomness exists in reality. It does not prove that, and never can.

Why do you say it's not a proof? I don't know if you know French (since your nickname is a French word), in the affirmative case, I strongly suggest you to listen to a small part of an interview of Étienne Klein. He's a physicist with an important post in France and he also has a Ph.D. in philosophy, earning a special mention for his thesis. See http://www.arte.tv/fr/science/104012,CmC=1551806,CmPart=com.arte-tv.www.html . He has a different point of view than yours about quantum mechanics. I've seen the interview more than a year ago so I may misquote him, but he basically said that throwing dices was not a true randomness because if you knew the initial conditions to an extreme degree, you'd know the outcome. He then says that things are different in QM and that one can NEVER know the "initial conditions" (for example the position and the velocity of a particle) not because they're hidden, but because they don't exist if no measurement is done (they can't exist both at the same time with a perfect accuracy). I remember him clearly saying that there is a "true randomness" in QM, unlike in Classical Mechanics. I'm just a second year physics student so I don't have his knowledge on both physics and philosophy, but I must say he's quite convincing.

I could produce a probablistic formula for any number of unknowns, and this would be backed up 100% by experimental data, because of course, the probablistic formula does not predict a precise outcome in the first place, just a range. The next question is, then, do we dare or bother to ask WHY a certain outcome happens rather than another outcome, or at least admit that we don't know the reason? Or, do we take a brazen leap of faith and assign a new force we call "randomness", which has zero foundation in logic.

What do you mean by "zero foundation in logic"? If I understand well the meaning, why an impossibility to know the outcome of a very simple experiment is illogic? Why do you assume that it's possible to know every initial configuration? In classical mechanics I agree it's possible, but not in QM. Now why trust QM? As I said, it hasn't been showed
wrong in its range of accuracy. I've read in a scientific website saying that there's a new article saying that any other theory that would replace QM cannot have more determinism than QM. In other words (I'm not expressing myself well in English), any other theory that would pretend to replace QM would have to have at least the same amount of indeterminism than the one of QM. It really implies that it's impossible to know "all velocities and positions of all particles at the same time". If anyone has the reference of the article, I'd be glad to know it. It stated that Einstein was wrong by thinking that eventually a more general theory than QM used to describe the microscopic world would be deterministic. It stated that Bohr was in the right direction with his QM and that there is no doubt today about it.
I also remember (from when I was 15 or 16, I'm 22 now) Brian Greene saying that Laplace's determinism has been eradicated by QM, in his famous "The elegant Universe".
Now, I'd love to hear some physicists on the subject.
Ah, and what is the relation between determinism and randomness? I believe that the indeterminism of QM leads to a pure randomness, i.e. some events whose outcomes are impossible to predict, no matter what theory you're using or if you know the maximum number of variable possible (which is less than all, according to QM and any other theory that pretend to replace it).

 

[Navigateur]

he basically said that throwing dices was not a true randomness because if you knew the initial conditions to an extreme degree, you'd know the outcome. He then says that things are different in QM and that one can NEVER know the "initial conditions" (for example the position and the velocity of a particle) not because they're hidden, but because they don't exist if no measurement is done (they can't exist both at the same time with a perfect accuracy). I remember him clearly saying that there is a "true randomness" in QM, unlike in Classical Mechanics. I'm just a second year physics student so I don't have his knowledge on both physics and philosophy, but I must say he's quite convincing.


What do you mean by "zero foundation in logic"? If I understand well the meaning, why an impossibility to know the outcome of a very simple experiment is illogic? Why do you assume that it's possible to know every initial configuration? In classical mechanics I agree it's possible, but not in QM. Now why trust QM? As I said, it hasn't been showed
wrong in its range of accuracy. I've read in a scientific website saying that there's a new article saying that any other theory that would replace QM cannot have more determinism than QM. In other words (I'm not expressing myself well in English), any other theory that would pretend to replace QM would have to have at least the same amount of indeterminism than the one of QM. It really implies that it's impossible to know "all velocities and positions of all particles at the same time". If anyone has the reference of the article, I'd be glad to know it. It stated that Einstein was wrong by thinking that eventually a more general theory than QM used to describe the microscopic world would be deterministic. It stated that Bohr was in the right direction with his QM and that there is no doubt today about it.
I also remember (from when I was 15 or 16, I'm 22 now) Brian Greene saying that Laplace's determinism has been eradicated by QM, in his famous "The elegant Universe".
Now, I'd love to hear some physicists on the subject.
Ah, and what is the relation between determinism and randomness? I believe that the indeterminism of QM leads to a pure randomness, i.e. some events whose outcomes are impossible to predict, no matter what theory you're using or if you know the maximum number of variable possible (which is less than all, according to QM and any other theory that pretend to replace it).

Dear fluidistic, you said "Now why trust QM? As I said, it hasn't been showed
wrong in its range of accuracy". That is the fundamental crux of your comment. And I point you again to the fact that I agree that its range of accuracy is shown to be right, and always will be, and I could produce a probablistic formula for any number of unknowns I like, it doesn't prove anything. It just shows that I don't know the reason for the variations. Can you come up with a more substantial defence than that? Well, it doesn't exist, and I'll tell you why.

You mentioned the uncertainty principle, but that was never about past events, Heisenberg was clear that in past events, particles CAN have had any-degree accurately measured position and momentum (quote from Heisenberg: "the uncertainty relation does not hold for the past"), so it was about CURRENT POSITION AND TRAJECTORY, in other words, his statements are about a very simple and blindingly obvious aspect of our observations, namely the particle's (from "now onwards") apparent "UNPREDICTABILITY" in behaviour!
So I ask you, not as a physicist, but as a human being, does the idea of "a particle's true state doesn't exist until I measure it", or "a particle is in infinite simultaneous states at a given time, one for each of the infinite parallel universes" or any of those other such made statements actually make sense to you? Can they be founded in logic? If, as it should be, the answer is obvious to you, then those statements are simply extremely guarded and convoluted ways of saying "I HAVE NO IDEA WHY THIS IS HAPPENING!" (as a natural result of the observed apparently unpredictable behaviour of the particles!) and nothing else. Why can't they just admit it like this? Because everybody likes to think they're better than Einstein, it makes them feel good. But science is not about outlandish leaps of faith such as those. It is about logic.

There's nothing wrong with not knowing why something is happening. I never suggested that we would be able to derive a maths formula for particle behaviour. We may never understand it. Just like human behaviour would be difficult to decipher by a maths formula by a "non-human" observer. But let's at least have the balls to admit it. And let's not make silly leaps of faith to compensate for this lack of balls.

 

[fluidistic]

Dear fluidistic, you said "Now why trust QM? As I said, it hasn't been showed
wrong in its range of accuracy". That is the fundamental crux of your comment. And I point you again to the fact that I agree that its range of accuracy is shown to be right, and always will be, and I could produce a probablistic formula for any number of unknowns I like, it doesn't prove anything. It just shows that I don't know the reason for the variations. Can you come up with a more substantial defence than that? Well, it doesn't exist, and I'll tell you why.

You mentioned the uncertainty principle, but that was never about past events, Heisenberg was clear that in past events, particles CAN have had any-degree accurately measured position and momentum (quote from Heisenberg: "the uncertainty relation does not hold for the past"), so it was about CURRENT POSITION AND TRAJECTORY, i.e. his statements are about a very simple and blindingly obvious aspect of our observations, namely the particle's (from "now onwards") apparent "UNPREDICTABILITY" in behaviour.
So I ask you, not as a physicist, but as a human being, does the idea of "a particle's true state doesn't exist until I measure it", or "a particle is in infinite simultaneous states at a given time, one for each of the infinite parallel universes" or any of those other such made statements actually make sense to you? Can they be founded in logic? If, as it should be, the answer is obvious to you, then those statements are simply extremely guarded and convoluted ways of saying "I DON'T KNOW WHY THIS IS HAPPENING" ("this" meaning the observed apparently unpredictable behaviour of particles) and nothing else. Why can't they just admit it like this? Because everybody likes to think they're better than Einstein, it makes them feel good. But science is not about outlandish leaps of faith such as those. It is about logic.

There's nothing wrong with not knowing why something is happening. I never suggested that we would be able to derive a maths formula for particle behaviour. We may never understand it. Just like human behaviour would be difficult to decipher by a maths formula by a "non-human" observer. But let's at least have the balls to admit it. And let's not make silly leaps of faith to compensate for this lack of balls.

There are results in QM that are either '0' or '1'. For example measuring a property of the electron (I don't remember what property). QM states that both outcomes have exactly the same probability to occur, namely 1/2. A physicist that make the measurement will never ask himself "why was the outcome 1 and not 0?" as you seem to imply in your last post. I know no physicist that thinks he's "better than Einstein" although maybe there are some. Crackpots may believe so.
There were more than one recent experiments that tried to determine whether the photon was a wave or a particle, before a measurement could be done. The surprising answer was that it wasn't a particle nor a wave before the measurement was done. We've succeeded in "trapping" the photon to know its "true" property but we've learned that there is no such thing as a true property, i.e. if it is a wave or a particle before you measure it. This completely goes against your intuition because our intuition is based on the macroscopic universe's behaviour, or an intuition very close to classical mechanics. Now saying, as you seem to believe, that the universe behaves like classical mechanics for a "non-human" observer, call it God or whatever, will never be in agreement with QM. Not being in agreement with QM means a false theory, or a theory that cannot describe the microscopic world. I repeat myself, but any theory that pretend to be more general than QM has to be in agreement with it, at least. It's a necessity. Physicists has shown this.
I'm leaving the conversation, I just hope a physicist will come and definitely put the last word on this "debate".
By the way, think about it: You seem really convinced that the world is deterministic, not for us humans because of your limitation, but for a non-human observer. You go against Bohr, QM, Klein, B.Greene and more than 90% of today's physicists I'd say. Philosophy alone cannot solve this problem; unfortunately you need measurements and theories trying to explain the outcomes of these measurements. QM has done its job perfectly until now. QM implies that the world is not deterministic and thus that randomness exists. No matter who you are (God, a cat, a human, etc.). I'm done with this discussion.

 

[Navigateur]

You have said much of nothing just now.

The ONLY observed empirical data for quantum-level behaviour is apparently unpredictable behaviour. Nothing else. Quantum mechanics has never NEEDED anything more to "DO IT'S JOB PERFECTLY".

The leaps of faith remind me of belief in God. People were not satisfied that they could not explain the world (it didn't seem to make sense), so they created the illogical concept "God" as explanation. And this was a hindrance to science. In the same way, people were not satisfied that they could not explain quantum-level behaviour (it didn't seem to make sense), so they created illogical concepts such as "randomness", "the observer effect" and others as explanation. In the same way, these are hindrances to science.

This is more about ego than anything else.

I'm done with this discussion.

A sure sign you have nothing to say.

 

[dainkelly]

I believe in determinism to a certain extent, there are specific occurences which i believe can't be predicted, but that there is an overall pattern in the universe cannot be argued. Maybe its like rolling a fair die, you can't know what it will be, but you do know that if you repeat the throw an infinite number of times, roughly one sixth of the time it will be 1.

 

[magpies]

I'm gona have to agree with navigateur QM does infact seem to be to science as to what god is to spirituality.

The only way I can see randomness existing is if "uncaused" causes can exist. As far as I can tell they can not and the work around to that is if an effect can be a cause to the cause.

 

[Boy@n]

Free-will is a by-product of limited and relative awareness, such as ours.

A being (aka God), would, paradoxily so, have no free-will, since it would always know the best choice (if He had to chose as we do).

Randomness is thus similar to free-will in sense that it has true appearance due to limited and relative information.

Cellular automata is a beautiful example of VERY simple rules producing 'random' patterns. Wolfram uses it in his program Mathematica - check it out.

 

[chiro]

This is a great thread and I thank the OP for starting it.

My personal view is that randomness is used to describe "unknown complexity". Consider that any process of some sort can be represented in any system (ie analytic, differential, partial differential etc). If we can model every system that is possible, then intuitively we would expect that there exists a unique representation for any system that is deterministic.

I'm going to go for a long shot and predict that the mathematics that is available in the next few centuries will see unifying factors between analysis and probability that help turn distributions into DE's or PDE's and not use simple linear models to describe the relationship between variables.

Also I imagine people will come up with more ways to essentially decompose mathematical processes which essentially shapes how we analyze things and how we understand things at different "atomic" viewpoints.

Personally I don't believe true randomness exists and my argument for that is based on my belief that every possible system with any amount of variables can be modeled using current mathematics to give a unique system that is dependent upon the relationships of the system and upon conditions of the system at given points. Its obviously not a trivial thing to prove (and my mathematical maturity is lacking in order to do so) but yeah if we consider all processes that are continuous then there must exist a function representation to describe the very process.

 

[flashprogram]

"Statistical" randomness can exist. But "True" randomness as some have stated is logically contradictory. What one implies with it is acausality, that identical conditions or premises(down to the most basic level) will yield at least two or more different outcomes which can even be contradictory to the other possible outcomes.

Acausality can exist in terms of the existence of truths being atemporal, without cause, but it cannot exist within said truths. The starting premises or conditions cannot yield different and possibly even opposing conclusions that contradict each other(This only occurs in human arguments, because there exist unstated assumptions that change the conclusion derived from the data... but if we were given all the assumptions, which are additional premises, the conclusion would be one.).

When it comes to the past we do not say that there are probabilities, there are only certainties. We say the probability becomes 100% after the fact, but this implies that there is a qualitative division between past, present and future. If we assume no qualitative difference exists between past, present and future, we must assume that both the present and the future are as determined as the past, and thus are https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2384967&postcount=24".

PS

As for quantum uncertainty, besides the hidden variables very real possibility. I've heard( in some articles) that it is theoretically possible , using some of the same quantum unintuitive phenomena, to device a method that can have some probability of detecting some aspects of something without disturbing it at all( quantum-mechanics interaction free measurements). If this is not false , it would suggest to me that even though it is a very low probability if similar methods exists(that have not been discovered) that allow measurements of other aspects without disturbing, it could be possible to measure multiple aspects of something at the same time and get a result without disturbing it.

The only thing that would impede this would be that the first premise is false(this type of measurement is impossible), or the second one(there exists no way to measure other aspects in this way).PPS

Another example would be that of pseudorandom number generation, just like pseudorandom numbers any sequence that lies in the past becomes predictable if it reoccurs in the future. Thus it is no longer unpredictable. If we assume the future and present are qualitatively no different than the past, we see that it too must be as solid and as determined. But not only that there will, given infinite time, always exists an infinity of future observers, such that all possible finite sequences lie in the past relative to some future observer, and thus are all in principle predictable.

The only way this would not be is if time is not infinite or the future and present are qualitatively different from the past. Then we'd need a mechanism that transitions and qualitatively changes states from future to present to past. What mechanism could this be? And what would it be doing, creating the present based on the past? Choosing amongst parallel possible futures? What would it be doing?, and how could it operate?, as this mechanism must be truly random it would have to be intrinsically so and it would also have to deal with the fact that time passes at different rates for different observers yet we all share the same causal world.