Is True Randomness a Fundamental Aspect of the Universe?

[craigi]

If your question is regarding nature - Yes randomness exists. Why was that the last potato chip? Why did a tree grow there? Why are you the way you are and your genes mix the way they did upon conception...

If your question is regarding random number/number generators/roulette wheel - No. There is always some bias weather it is due to the amount of ink on the bingo ball making it somewhat heavier. an ever so slightly different shape to the lotto ball that makes it catch the air differently. A so slightly manufactured roulette wheel with 0.030 inch tolerances for size variation... or a number matrix used to calculate the next "random" number - which could of course be utilized to calculate the next number if the formula and matrix were known.

Why do you think that similar small biases and correlations don't exist in the things that you list in your first paragraph?

 

[Claude Bile]

Interesting thread.

Even if there is a hidden mechanism explaining the apparent randomness on a quantum level, quantum physics explicitly prevents us from accessing that information.

Thus QM, for all intents and purposes is random.

That's the general gist I get from QM people I talk to anyway.

Claude.

 

[atoms555]

random my butt

Notwithstanding Daudo's, "...discard out of hand any non-local explanation.", I propose that, "Perfect randomness is impossible."! If this is true, (please don't, "discard this out of hand"), then which of the three laws of thermodynamics is wrong?

 

[dauto]

Notwithstanding Daudo's, "...discard out of hand any non-local explanation.", I propose that, "Perfect randomness is impossible."! If this is true, (please don't, "discard this out of hand"), then which of the three laws of thermodynamics is wrong?

Why would any of them have to be wrong? Can you elaborate the point of the question?

 

[Rookery]

Classical mechanics carried the general knowledge that everything was predictable. There is now a fair amount of experimental evidence within quantum mechanics saying that many things in our universe are random.

 

[atoms555]

Great question, dilsfunspot. I propose that perfect randomness not only doesn't exist--it is impossible! If this is true, what is the ramification of this in physics?

 

[gabriel.dac]

I don't think that randomness exist. Technically you can study every particle and it's place in space and you can pretty much know what's going to happen next. Everything happens for a reason