Can Randomness and Causality Coexist Logically?

[jadrian]

not to be impolite, but i truly view randomness in reality as something you can trick your kids into accepting along with santa, the tooth fairy etc.

when compared to causality the idea of true randomness existing in reality seems incredibly weak to me.

is there any logical way to reconcile the two?

 

[jadrian]

not to be impolite, but i truly view randomness in reality as something you can trick your kids into accepting along with santa, the tooth fairy etc.

when compared to causality the idea of true randomness existing in reality seems incredibly weak to me.

is there any logical way to reconcile the two?

i guess not

 

[DrChinese]

not to be impolite, but i truly view randomness in reality as something you can trick your kids into accepting along with santa, the tooth fairy etc.

when compared to causality the idea of true randomness existing in reality seems incredibly weak to me.

is there any logical way to reconcile the two?

Yes, there is. It is called Bohmian Mechanics. I would recommend you reading up on it a bit, and there are several here that can help you to understand it better. I should point out that has a drawback that may or may not bother you. In the Bohmian view, causes can propagate faster than light.

 

[friend]

not to be impolite, but i truly view randomness in reality as something you can trick your kids into accepting along with santa, the tooth fairy etc.

when compared to causality the idea of true randomness existing in reality seems incredibly weak to me.

is there any logical way to reconcile the two?

Keep in mind that there is no consensus that physics is derived from logic, although I know of some efforts to do so. In such an effort, causality would somehow be linked to the relationship of material implication in logic, where cause and effect is just a form of consequences from premises. Time would just be a marker to indicate where one is in a sequence of causes and effects. I suspect that uncertainty would come in because there would be multiple sequences of events that get you from one cause to some final effect. We would not be able to say that any particular path was taken, so we would be left to calculate the probabilities for various paths. Hope this helps.

 

[jadrian]

Yes, there is. It is called Bohmian Mechanics. I would recommend you reading up on it a bit, and there are several here that can help you to understand it better. I should point out that has a drawback that may or may not bother you. In the Bohmian view, causes can propagate faster than light.

i don't have to much of a problem with causes propagating faster than light, because to my knowledge there are tons of tiny wormholes on the quantum scale, which would allow for this, while large scale wormholes are not apparently common/spontaneously existent. that would explain why uncertainty only arises at a quantum scale in my mind. but thanks for the post. very interesting.

 

[genericusrnme]

you only see randomness as wrong because you're use to the macroscopic experience of determinism

If you took a completely different standpoint, say an alien from a bizare world where there is something other than randomness and determinism, then determinism and randomness are both absurd.

 

[jadrian]

from wiki on bohmian mechanics

The argument is that, because adding particles does not have an effect on the wavefunction's evolution, such particles must not have effects at all and are, thus, unobservable, since they cannot have an effect on observers.

i like this interpretation, because it fits with my personal view that there is something bumping the curtain but we can never see it because we can't exit the universe, unless you like spagetti

 

[questionpost]

not to be impolite, but i truly view randomness in reality as something you can trick your kids into accepting along with santa, the tooth fairy etc.

when compared to causality the idea of true randomness existing in reality seems incredibly weak to me.

is there any logical way to reconcile the two?

The point of randomness is that it isn't logical at all, there isn't an actual reason for it to occur, it just occurs, and when it occurs, it does nothing more than occur. I'm pretty sure our knowledge in QM has figured this out. The entire macroscopic world is built from randomness and chaos, we just don't see it as much because things happen to happen at a slow enough rate that we can predict where things are "probable" to be at large distances where the probability of wave-functions approach 0.

 

[StevieTNZ]

i guess not

It seems you were expecting someone to reply within the 41 mins you posted the thread and that comment. Patience is good.

 

[jadrian]

the probability of wave-functions approach 0.[/QUOTE]

so wave functions are not 100 percent probabliistic?
im ok with 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999 percent likelyhood that the wavefunction is random. that could provide accurate qm predictions. maybe its asymptotic. 100 percent has serious implications.

 

[alsor]

not to be impolite, but i truly view randomness in reality as something you can trick your kids into accepting along with santa, the tooth fairy etc.

Randomness is only lack of information about the causes of events.

Just like a shadow: it does not exist as an independent entity, but it is just absence of light.

 

[jadrian]

Keep in mind that there is no consensus that physics is derived from logic, although I know of some efforts to do so. In such an effort, causality would somehow be linked to the relationship of material implication in logic, where cause and effect is just a form of consequences from premises. Time would just be a marker to indicate where one is in a sequence of causes and effects. I suspect that uncertainty would come in because there would be multiple sequences of events that get you from one cause to some final effect. We would not be able to say that any particular path was taken, so we would be left to calculate the probabilities for various paths. Hope this helps.

then why was possibly the grandest discovery in history derived from Alberts logic?

 

[jadrian]

Randomness is only lack of information about the causes of events.

Just like a shadow: it does not exist as an independent entity, but it is just absence of light.

thats the way i feel and its about the most logically and mathematically sound statement than can be made.

 

[jadrian]

It seems you were expecting someone to reply within the 41 mins you posted the thread and that comment. Patience is good.

yes i was afraid that at 42 minutes the thread would randomly decay

 

[Joncon]

Randomness is only lack of information about the causes of events.

It seems people have different ideas of what the word "random" means. Personally, I don't like the definition of random as "lack of information", especially when you're talking about QM. I would define random as something which happens without cause, which I'm guessing is where the OP is coming from.

 

[jadrian]

you only see randomness as wrong because you're use to the macroscopic experience of determinism

If you took a completely different standpoint, say an alien from a bizare world where there is something other than randomness and determinism, then determinism and randomness are both absurd.

i don't know how many pounds of acid i would have to do to believe we have a quasiexistence

 

[StevieTNZ]

the probability of wave-functions approach 0.

so wave functions are not 100 percent probabliistic?
im ok with 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999 percent likelyhood that the wavefunction is random. that could provide accurate qm predictions. maybe its asymptotic. 100 percent has serious implications.

I think you've mis-understood the original statement. The wave function is what gives the probabilistic predictions for various measurement results on a quantum system. It does provide accurate QM predictions.

 

[jadrian]

It seems people have different ideas of what the word "random" means. Personally, I don't like the definition of random as "lack of information", especially when you're talking about QM. I would define random as something which happens without cause, which I'm guessing is where the OP is coming from.

yeah ur definition of randomness is what i would call true randomness, and is why i have issues with it...particles doing things because they want to...

 

[friend]

then why was possibly the grandest discovery in history derived from Alberts logic?

Reality is the ultimate arbiter between theories. And it was not clear from the beginning how one could derive physics from logic. So we have settled on using a trial and error method for finding mathematics for curve fitting the data from experiment. Thus our theories are contingent on future experiments not falsifying them. So we can never really know, by this method, that a theory is true beyond all doubt. The ONLY way to derive a TOE beyond all argument is to derive it from logic, the very rules of argument themselves.

 

[questionpost]

Randomness is only lack of information about the causes of events.

Just like a shadow: it does not exist as an independent entity, but it is just absence of light.

That's what I use to think when I was maybe 10-12, but some things just actually don't occur for a reason as well as the fact that there may be infinite factors or infinite levels of determinism making things on any specific level not deterministic or strictly incalculable with 100% accuracy, possibly because of fractal symmetry which mathematically goes on infinitely or an infinitely large universe. As QM explains, there is no real reason for a particle to appear in the place that it does, and you also cannot base where it will be next based on where it is now, so information to carry a cause-and-effect pattern is not preserved, and this is the realm that everything is built from.

 

[alsor]

As QM explains, there is no real reason for a particle to appear in the place that it does, and you also cannot base where it will be next based on where it is now, so information to carry a cause-and-effect pattern is not preserved, and this is the realm that everything is built from.

Of course, because QM is a statistical model only.
Pure statistics do not considers the reasons (methods of realisation) the observed events.

Therefore, any desired statistics can be generated in many different ways.
It is this 'freedom' which is revealed in the statistics as uncertainty - indeterminacy of states.

 

[edguy99]

not to be impolite, but i truly view randomness in reality as something you can trick your kids into accepting along with santa, the tooth fairy etc.

when compared to causality the idea of true randomness existing in reality seems incredibly weak to me.

is there any logical way to reconcile the two?

You are suggesting that if there is no randomness then there must be complete causality. I would disagree.

If you view the world as some sort of solution to an equation with time as a variable, then you are stuck with this. But if you view the world as sequences of moments like frames in a movie where you set the distance zoom and the frame rate, you get a very different view of the world. Never can you simply show the orbit of a planet as a solution to an equation, but now you must do many sequental calculations over a specific time scale to calculate the orbit. You can start with Newtons law, and it works well for a view orbits. But as you zoom out on the time scale you find you must deal with the precession of Mercury and you have to add the calculations of relativity. As you zoom in on a distance scale, you start to see coulombs law break down and principles of quantum physics must be applied (ie paulis principle).

You never have complete causality in this world because you can always zoom in for more detail either on a time scale or a distance scale to resolve apparent randomness. There is not a "complete" picture that will ever emerge, only an ongoing quest for knowledge. In this world, God does not play dice, but there seems to be an infinite amount of detail.

 

[friend]

You never have complete causality in this world because you can always zoom in for more detail either on a time scale or a distance scale to resolve apparent randomness. There is not a "complete" picture that will ever emerge, only an ongoing quest for knowledge. In this world, God does not play dice, but there seems to be an infinite amount of detail.

This is resting uncertainty on the inability of humans to measure accurately. This does not address what might in theory be uncertain. It's imaginable that there be a theory which IS exact except we cannot practically calculate to an infinite degress of accuracy nor measure with an infinite degree of accuracy, even though the theory itself might be infinitely accurate.

I think the inherent inaccuracy comes from the fact that there may inherently be many possible sequences of events that lead from a cause to the same effect, which introduces probability from any cause to any effect.

 

[questionpost]

Of course, because QM is a statistical model only.
Pure statistics do not considers the reasons (methods of realisation) the observed events.

Therefore, any desired statistics can be generated in many different ways.
It is this 'freedom' which is revealed in the statistics as uncertainty - indeterminacy of states.

A particle in its normal state doesn't occupy a single point, it's a wave, which means it has no definite position, which means no definite results based on position. As far as evidence is concerned, there is no other "thing" that makes up particles that determine what it does, and even if we found something, we would have to ask what's making it determine the things that it does. If there are somehow factors that determine things in QM (which there isn't really any evidence to support), then you just keep asking what's making that thing determine results and what's making that thing determine the thing that determines the results, and it would never end, which is kind of like a paradox, and paradoxes have a hard time of existing in reality.

This is resting uncertainty on the inability of humans to measure accurately. This does not address what might in theory be uncertain. It's imaginable that there be a theory which IS exact except we cannot practically calculate to an infinite degress of accuracy nor measure with an infinite degree of accuracy, even though the theory itself might be infinitely accurate.

I think the inherent inaccuracy comes from the fact that there may inherently be many possible sequences of events that lead from a cause to the same effect, which introduces probability from any cause to any effect.

Have you ever heard of irrational numbers? Well it's sort of impossible to have 100% accuracy with those around.

 

[jadrian]

That's what I use to think when I was maybe 10-12, but some things just actually don't occur for a reason as well as the fact that there may be infinite factors or infinite levels of determinism making things on any specific level not deterministic or strictly incalculable with 100% accuracy, possibly because of fractal symmetry which mathematically goes on infinitely or an infinitely large universe. As QM explains, there is no real reason for a particle to appear in the place that it does, and you also cannot base where it will be next based on where it is now, so information to carry a cause-and-effect pattern is not preserved, and this is the realm that everything is built from.

how could infinite determinism lead to nondeterminism?

 

[jadrian]

You are suggesting that if there is no randomness then there must be complete causality. I would disagree.

If you view the world as some sort of solution to an equation with time as a variable, then you are stuck with this. But if you view the world as sequences of moments like frames in a movie where you set the distance zoom and the frame rate, you get a very different view of the world. Never can you simply show the orbit of a planet as a solution to an equation, but now you must do many sequental calculations over a specific time scale to calculate the orbit. You can start with Newtons law, and it works well for a view orbits. But as you zoom out on the time scale you find you must deal with the precession of Mercury and you have to add the calculations of relativity. As you zoom in on a distance scale, you start to see coulombs law break down and principles of quantum physics must be applied (ie paulis principle).

You never have complete causality in this world because you can always zoom in for more detail either on a time scale or a distance scale to resolve apparent randomness. There is not a "complete" picture that will ever emerge, only an ongoing quest for knowledge. In this world, God does not play dice, but there seems to be an infinite amount of detail.

im pretty sure there isn't an infinite amount of detail per unit volume. also, your zooming in or out is a cause in itself which you can't ignore

 

[jadrian]

A particle in its normal state doesn't occupy a single point, it's a wave, which means it has no definite position, which means no definite results based on position. As far as evidence is concerned, there is no other "thing" that makes up particles that determine what it does, and even if we found something, we would have to ask what's making it determine the things that it does. If there are somehow factors that determine things in QM (which there isn't really any evidence to support), then you just keep asking what's making that thing determine results and what's making that thing determine the thing that determines the results, and it would never end, which is kind of like a paradox, and paradoxes have a hard time of existing in reality.



Have you ever heard of irrational numbers? Well it's sort of impossible to have 100% accuracy with those around.

i understand a particle is not a point, but that does mean the wave has some defined shape, that we will never be able to measure.

also irrational numbers to me just represent maths failure to model reality with100 percent certainty, also representing limits on the info we can acquire. a true perfectly curved sphere for example, may be a human intuition creation, and may not exist in reality.

 

[connornm777]

Yea, I'd have to say I'm with jadrian on this one. Quantum Mechanics always bugged me, especially when it's interpreted as literally random and not just an approximation.

Does anybody know any equations from Quantum Theory that may make it easier to understand (and if possible explained to someone who's extent of mathematical knowledge is calculus)?

 

[Zarqon]

To the OP: Why do you expect randomness to conflict with causality at all?

They are two different properties and I don't see how randomness would in any way imply a failure of causality. The cause of an event can be random, but as long as the effects of that event happen after the cause there is no problem?

 

[questionpost]

i understand a particle is not a point, but that does mean the wave has some defined shape, that we will never be able to measure.

also irrational numbers to me just represent maths failure to model reality with100 percent certainty, also representing limits on the info we can acquire. a true perfectly curved sphere for example, may be a human intuition creation, and may not exist in reality.

You can come up with whatever reasoning you want for causality you want but experiments in reality say otherwise. So far no lower levels of particles have been discovered, and even if we somehow detected manifolds, I doubt scientists would say anything so small would act predictably. If you say there's a causality, then you will have to define infinite factors, which is impossible.