Is Randomness Real or Just Complex Predictability?

[travwg33]

Just to help define what random is Dictionary.com states that it is:

"–adjective
1. proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern: the random selection of numbers."

But does random truly exist?
For example the roll of dice is usually referred to as random, but really there are tons of factors that control the result of a roll. Air resistance, friction for the surface the dice land on, how the dice are thrown, their starting position, etc...
In the game of craps, there are people who can actually change the probability of rolling certain combinations of numbers; obviously they are tampering with the factors to change the result.

Is random merely a term dubbed for scenarios too complex for us to break down and predict, or does random exist?

 

[wuliheron]

That is really a metaphysical question rather than an issue for physics. Being metaphysical there is also no way to prove the issue one way or another. For all we know everything is ultimately utterly random or perfectly orderly, but there is no way to prove the issue either way. The best we can do is report what we observe.

That being the case, what we observe is that the random and orderly seem to go together and, for all we know, the two are relative. That is, what looks random to one person might look orderly to another and the two might actually be inseperable opposites like "up" and "down" that have no meaning as absolutes. The reality that they describe could even be something that is simply beyond human comprehension.

 

[Pythagorean]

If you're talking about dice and probability, you're talking about this kind of random:

All outcomes being unpredictable and, in the ideal case, equally probable; resulting from such selection; lacking statistical correlation

I think it's an ideal that most probably doesn't exist, but can be approximated very well in certain situations (coin/dice toss)

 

[JoeDawg]

Is random merely a term dubbed for scenarios too complex for us to break down and predict, or does random exist?

Random, generally, can mean one of two things:
1)Unpredictable, from a given point of view.
2)Uncaused, by a previous event.

The first one is easy, random in this sense is just a description based on either a simple lack of knowledge or the impossiblity of having enough knowledge. The former being like predicting what your girlfriend will wear, whereas the latter is like predicting the weather.

The second refers to an actual event that has no preceding cause. Whether this can exist is an open question, and even if they do exist, it would be unlikely that one could distinguish it from something that is simply unpredictable.

 

[jgm340]

I like this definition of random: "a behavior for which we cannot determine the cause".

In mathematics, the study of probability is the study of a function without knowing anything about the domain.

 

[Ken Natton]

I make no comment on any philosophical notion of what is truly 'random' but in the purely practical world of computing, genuinely random numbers are notoriuosly difficult to generate. Computers usually generate 'random' numbers by seeding a pre-written numeric sequence.

But I do remember reading a description of some really convoluted setup that involved vertical transparent tubes filled with some fluid in which was suspended some microbiological life form. This life form created constantly shifting opacity in the fluid. Light was then shone through the tube and any light that made it through was detected and used to generate random binary numbers. It was reckoned that was the closest anyone had come to genuinely random number generation.

Don't know if that is what you were looking for.

 

[wuliheron]

There are commercially available quantum random number generators you can buy for computers.

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

 

[hagopbul]

yes i believe so

 

[wuliheron]

To believe in the truly random is to believe in the supernatural. By definition the supernatural is "beyond natural law".

 

[Evo]

To believe in the truly random is to believe in the supernatural.

Why? Please back that up.

 

[wuliheron]

Any dictionary will do the trick:

Supernatural
adjective
1. of, pertaining to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal.

 

[Evo]

Any dictionary will do the trick:

No, that's not what I asked. I asked you to explain how random = supernatural. Please explain.

 

[Newai]

Assume the circumstances in the environment and all influences can be reproduced down to the atomic scale in the roll of a die. In this case, the exact motion and direction of a hand, from the speed of the swing to the exact same point of release, is duplicated exactly, as well as all other influences. Will the die produce without fail the same result?

 

[Fuzzystuff]

When something is random, it is unexpected. You cannot expect what number will be next out of a random selection of a million numbers, for instance, especially if you don't know how the generator works. Not necessarily abnormal, though. "Random" stuff happens all day long. We use the potential of random for many risk assessments such as your commute to work, your financial budget, your goal setting dates, etc. All of them use "what could happen". You don't know for sure if it's going to happen or not, so this is "random" to you. I really don't think the unexpected is abnormal, but pretty normal in our day to day lives. This is why we go to work early, have an emergency fund, and add in the possible roadblocks to our goals.

Supernatural is supernatural, random is random. The only inter-relationship I can see is that you cannot explain how the generator chose it's number, if you have no clue how the generator is choosing it's number.

There is also the quanta world and below Planck length that is seemingly random to us humans, and in fact we can only apply "potentials" or "probabilities" to some aspects of quantum physics.

Random is either 2 things in my eyes:

a. Not enough information supplied to come to a concrete prediction.
b. Not possible to gain enough information to come to a concrete prediction.

The former is easy, while the latter assumes that we cannot gain all of the information necessary to make the prediction absolutely concrete. Only potentials and probabilities of said prediction coming true.

There is the measurement problem and also the uncertainty principle in physics, too.

 

[Fuzzystuff]

Assume the circumstances in the environment and all influences can be reproduced down to the atomic scale in the roll of a die. In this case, the exact motion and direction of a hand, from the speed of the swing to the exact same point of release, is duplicated exactly, as well as all other influences. Will the die produce without fail the same result?

No single event happens the exact same way twice. It's practically impossible and may be intrinsically in nature to be impossible. So even theoretically speaking, it may be impossible to have the same event happen identically the same way twice or more.

 

[wuliheron]

No, that's not what I asked. I asked you to explain how random = supernatural. Please explain.

If you really insist I will post the definitions of both words, however, I shall try to explain without resorting to such crude methods.

In general westerners tend to think of the "supernatural" as involving rituals, deities, etc., but this is certainly not the only way of thinking of the concept. It is more of a cultural predjudice than anything else. In the strictest sense the supernatural is simply anything that does not obey natural laws which includes anything truly random. For example, virtual particles appear and disappear out of the vacuum of space without any known causal agent. They apparently do so randomly without any rhyme or reason, thus being beyond natural law.

 

[Newai]

No single event happens the exact same way twice. It's practically impossible and may be intrinsically in nature to be impossible. So even theoretically speaking, it may be impossible to have the same event happen identically the same way twice or more.

Okay, so what makes the second throw in the duplicated circumstances and environment different from the first? What causes the different result?

 

[Evo]

If you really insist I will post the definitions of both words, however, I shall try to explain without resorting to such crude methods.

In general westerners tend to think of the "supernatural" as involving rituals, deities, etc., but this is certainly not the only way of thinking of the concept. It is more of a cultural predjudice than anything else. In the strictest sense the supernatural is simply anything that does not obey natural laws which includes anything truly random.

What makes you think something random is not obeying natural laws?

For example, virtual particles appear and disappear out of the vacuum of space without any known causal agent. They apparently do so randomly without any rhyme or reason, thus being beyond natural law.

Bolding mine. And how did you come to this conclusion?

 

[wuliheron]

What makes you think something random is not obeying natural laws?

Bolding mine. And how did you come to this conclusion?

If you really insist:

Law
noun
1. the principles and regulations established in a community by some authority and applicable to its people, whether in the form of legislation or of custom and policies recognized and enforced by judicial decision.
2. any written or positive rule or collection of rules prescribed under the authority of the state or nation, as by the people in its constitution. Compare bylaw, statute law.
3. the controlling influence of such rules; the condition of society brought about by their observance: maintaining law and order.
4. a system or collection of such rules.

The idea of a "random" law is an oxymoron.

 

[Fuzzystuff]

Okay, so what makes the second throw in the duplicated circumstances and environment different from the first? What causes the different result?

The uncertainty principle states that the more we know of an object's velocity, the less we know of the object's position and vice-versa. This is nature unrelenting to fully reveal herself to us. This is also not the researches fault, but is intrinsic in quantum mechanics. It also states that any vector we use to measure will have this same issue. There are also vibrations at the quanta level, beyond the point of anything meaningful or measurable, that can add up from chaos theory to prevent us from duplicating the event twice or more.

Basically, you would have to be all knowing and all seeing to be able to measure the event. Then you would have to be Godlike in precision to duplicate the event exactly as it was the first time, which even then it may be impossible to do. It may be intrinsic in nature not to allow us to duplicate an event's outcome identical to the first, second or third time doing it. The best we have is the probability of the outcome, no matter how many times we run the experiment.

 

[Fuzzystuff]

If you really insist:



The idea of a "random" law is an oxymoron.

You're presupposing random is real, when the question of this thread is if it's real or not.

 

[Evo]

If you really insist:



The idea of a "random" law is an oxymoron.

Once again you avoided answering my question. What makes random = supernatural. Please explain and not evade answering.

 

[wuliheron]

Once again you avoided answering my question. What makes random = supernatural. Please explain and not evade answering.

I am answering the question as directly as I can. Neither the random nor the supernatural obey any laws. I could extrapolate further and go into detail about how any such metaphysical statement has no demonstrable meaning outside of specific contexts or how many cultures see the two as one and the same phenomena, but that would be to digress.

 

[Evo]

I am answering the question as directly as I can. Neither the random nor the supernatural obey any laws.

And how exactly do you know random occurences do not follow laws? I'm eating and a piece of food falls out of my mouth onto the floor. It's a random occurence, following the laws of gravity.

 

[KalamMekhar]

Predict me an accurate 10th day forecast, and you will have solved the randomness of weather systems. Predicting weather is essentially impossible for anything longer than 5 days, because of the randomness of weather systems.

 

[jostpuur]

To believe in the truly random is to believe in the supernatural. By definition the supernatural is "beyond natural law".

Why? Please back that up.

wuliheron said that because his/her intuition says that truly random is supernatural. Doesn't look a big deal to me.

Evo, if your intuition says the opposite. Can you "back up" your opinion?

These are kind of topics where you must rely on intuition and not logic, because it's impossible to come up with rigor definitions for the concepts. It's pretty difficult to justify anything properly.

I'm eating and a piece of food falls out of my mouth onto the floor. It's a random occurence, following the laws of gravity.

There is no reason to assume that an accidental slip with a piece of food is an example of a truly random event. This is not related to wuliheron's original claim.

 

[Fuzzystuff]

This conversation is about to turn silly real fast. Let's suppose that the conditions that lead to the bit of food that fell out of your mouth and onto the floor were mostly due to your precision of eating. If you are a sloppy eater, the more frequent the occurrence of food falling out of your mouth will be over a period of time. How sloppy can a person be at eating food? Does the chance that the person eats so sloppy that you can literally predict that food will fall out of his mouth mean it is random? No.. it doesn't. How do you know the person's eating habits are sloppy, so sloppy that you can predict to let's say, 99.99% certainty that he will indeed drop food out of his mouth. You would have to observe. And observe. Your whole life would be devoted to watching this dude eat food, just to make sure that food dropping out of his mouth isn't a random occurrence.

Now before I flip the coin note I said 99.99% chance. Why not just plain old 100%?

Let's flip the coin now and say that the chance of a very professional eater has of food dropping out of his mouth is slim to none. Sure, it's possible. A gust of wind could cause food to blow out of the mouth, or a twitch in the nervous system, but let's say we have perfect conditions and environment for this professional eater. The dude (pro food eater) is in a vacuum, no light being shone on him, nothing that could possibly interfere with him eating food. (Before I go on.. What are some of the issues arising here? He would have to have a perfect nervous system and body system under the effects of the quanta. He would have to be able to be a perfect eater in the complete dark. He would also still be under the effects of gravity, not to mention quantum entanglement, even if we put him in complete space and he was able to be a perfect eater in 0 gravity. Virtual particles would come into play as a potential for a crumble.) He would have to be in a state where we can't even measure the dude to make sure that he has 100% chance of not dropping food out of his mouth, giving that food crumbling out of his mouth would be an utterly, unexpected, unaccounted for random occurrence.

To end, my conjecture is that that we'll never really know if random is real or not. The measurements needed to observe the randomness wouldn't be possible, and if they were possible, it would be in the wave function of the particles associated with the randomness. I beg the question then, what's up with parallel universes? :p

 

[Evo]

wuliheron said that because his/her intuition says that truly random is supernatural. Doesn't look a big deal to me.

Evo, if your intuition says the opposite. Can you "back up" your opinion?

Don't have to, he/she made the claim, the onus is on him/her to back that up.

 

[DrRocket]

I like this definition of random: "a behavior for which we cannot determine the cause".

In mathematics, the study of probability is the study of a function without knowing anything about the domain.

No, it is not.

In mathematics probability theory is a subset of the general theory of measure and integration. That is one of Kolmogorov's major contributions to mathematics. The domain is clearly defined, and it is what is called a probability space. A random variable is simply a measurable function defined on that probability space.

There is no good mathematical definition for "random" beyond that.

 

[Pythagorean]

There's a lot of subjectivity in the popular definition. I haven't thought about random like this for a little less than a decade. Let's take a internet poll:

i) wikipedia.com:
Randomness is a concept with somewhat disparate meanings in several fields. It also has common meanings which may have loose connections with some of those more definite meanings

ii) wordlnetweb.princeton.edu:
lacking any definite plan or order or purpose; governed by or depending on chance; "a random choice"; "bombs fell at random"; "random movements"

iii) webster.com:
having the quality of being a remarkable coincidence

From i) the first bit of subjectivity comes from our individual connotations of the word.

Definition ii) and iii) are similar to the OP's definition, which seems to be a statement about causation. In this regard, I can see what wuliheron is trying to say (something about ignorance about causation being common between seemingly random events and supernatural events, which both have definition that are rooted in a lack of causation). I wouldn't have chosen the comparison, myself because individual notions of the word supernatural will just confuse the picture more.)

Anyway, my point is that this popular definition of random makes it a subjective device. It doesn't point to a particular lack of causation, so much as a lack of knowledge of causation. In that regard, as a state of mind, it does exist. Whereas the supernatural, which is more objectively defined, does not seem to exist.

Unless, of course, the fundamental question is supposed to about the lack of causation itself. Did the OP mean, "Do all events have a cause?"

 

[wuliheron]

Obviously I can no more prove that something is truly random than I can prove an undetectable pixie sits on my left shoulder. Again, this is a metaphysical issue which is by definition beyond the ability of science to prove one way or another. Nor should it be within the purview of science, in my opinion, which has more productive matters issues to attend to.

However, what science can address is the definition of terms including "random" and "supernatural". These, I assert, only have demonstrable meaning according to their function in a given context. When the context becomes so broad as to include life, the universe, and everything there is no demonstrable difference between the random and supernatural. Both are said to not obey natural law.

 

[DrRocket]

Obviously I can no more prove that something is truly random than I can prove an undetectable pixie sits on my left shoulder. Again, this is a metaphysical issue which is by definition beyond the ability of science to prove one way or another. Nor should it be within the purview of science, in my opinion, which more productive matters issues to attend to.

However, what science can address is the definition of terms including "random" and "supernatural". These, I assert, only have demonstrable meaning according to their function in a given context. When the context becomes so broad as to include life, universe, and everything there is no demonstrable difference between the random and supernatural.

In order for you to prove that sometning is truly random, you would need a solid mathematical definition of what is meant by "random". Lacking that there is no possibility of a proof.

 

[Pythagorean]

In order for you to prove that sometning is truly random, you would need a solid mathematical definition of what is meant by "random". Lacking that there is no possibility of a proof.

In an earlier post, I brought up the definition that refers to a situation in which all events are equally probable, then all events are random (even in the causative perspective) I think this is mathematically rigorous enough as a definition. I also tend to think it's highly unlikely that any real system has a chance of all it's states being equally probable because real systems can't be perfectly isolated from perturbation and entropy.

That's not say we can't well approximate it for our purposes. Dice and coins are the popular examples. If you do an experiment with a coin, and you do a lot of trials, you will find about a 50/50 split. But there's always error. What if you have a habit of always starting the coins head up, and you've flipped a coin so many times your muscles are more likely to put eight flips into the coin than any other number of flips, etc, etc. These irregularities in the statistics are causative factors. True randomness, a lack of cause, would mean the coin truly had no destiny to land heads up or tails up.

In physics, there's one particular behavior I can think of that has no known cause and happens in a statistically consistent way regardless of conditions:

atom decay

people are still arguing over whether it's truly random (has no cause) or not.

 

[jostpuur]

However, what science can address is the definition of terms including "random" and "supernatural".

So you believe that you have a definition for what "random" actually means?

(So rigor definition, that it can be used to deal with these claims about randomness being supernatural.)

 

[jostpuur]

In an earlier post, I brought up the definition that refers to a situation in which all events are equally probable, then all events are random (even in the causative perspective) I think this is mathematically rigorous enough as a definition.

Defining the concept of randomness by using the concept of probability is not the most satisfying strategy for finding a definition