Is Randomness Truly Understandable in a Mathematical Context?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the concept of randomness within a mathematical context, exploring its implications, definitions, and the relationship between randomness and the description of reality. It touches on theoretical aspects and philosophical implications rather than practical applications or specific mathematical problems.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • One participant suggests that randomness can be understood as the descriptive complexity of a data structure, where the description requires more information than the structure itself contains.
  • Another participant echoes the idea that our inability to create a perfect description of reality contributes to the perception of a random world.
  • A third participant critiques a definition of randomness, noting that the phrase "as if by chance" lacks precision and implies a lack of a priori knowledge of cause and effect.
  • One participant proposes a mathematical perspective, suggesting that all mathematics can be derived from a conjunction of axioms and their consequences, implying a holographic nature of mathematics.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express varying interpretations of randomness and its implications, with no clear consensus on definitions or the nature of randomness itself. Multiple competing views remain present in the discussion.

Contextual Notes

Some statements rely on specific interpretations of randomness and mathematical axioms, which may not be universally accepted or defined. The discussion does not resolve these interpretations.

khanster
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I will give it a try:

Randomness appears to be the descriptive complexity of a data structure such, that description of the structure takes more bits of information than what appears to be contained in the structure itself.

In that respect, we live in a random world due to the inability for humans to create a description of reality that is perfectly isomorphic with reality.


An interesting way to generate random numbers?

http://www.random.org/integers/


This form allows you to generate random integers. The randomness comes from atmospheric noise, which for many purposes is better than the pseudo-random number algorithms typically used in computer programs.
 
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khanster said:
In that respect, we live in a random world due to the inability for humans to create a description of reality that is perfectly isomorphic with reality.

Not yet anyway.
 
I like the first sentence of wolfram's definiion of random number.

"as if by chance" is sloppy, but I think it means no a priori knowledge of cause and effect.
 
Pick the conjunction of all axioms ever to be employed. This set can be broken down into finitely many groups of axioms where two axioms/statements are in the same group if they imply each other.

Take the consequence hull (or closure) of that set of statements. (The smallest set of all consequences of those statements, say)

That is all of mathematics.

Thus mathematics is holographic in nature.
 

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