Is True Randomness Just an Illusion?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the concept of true randomness and whether it exists in practice. Participants explore examples such as coin flips, dice rolls, and lottery draws to illustrate their points, examining the implications of precision and control over variables in random events.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • One participant argues that if a machine flips a coin or rolls a die under identical conditions, the outcomes would be the same every time, suggesting that randomness is an illusion.
  • Another participant counters that mathematicians can define randomness within their theoretical frameworks, implying that true randomness can exist in those contexts.
  • A different participant emphasizes that the perceived randomness in everyday activities, like flipping a coin or rolling dice, is due to human imprecision rather than true randomness.
  • One comment suggests that discussions about randomness should be documented in a personal journal, indicating a dismissive attitude towards the topic.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express differing views on the existence of true randomness, with some asserting it is an illusion while others maintain that it can be defined mathematically. The discussion remains unresolved with multiple competing perspectives.

Contextual Notes

The discussion highlights the dependence on definitions of randomness and the implications of precision in experiments, but does not resolve the underlying assumptions about randomness in theoretical versus practical contexts.

uperkurk
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I've been thinking about what random actually is and let me give you an example. If you made a machine that flips a penny, put the machine and and penny in a small room, place the penny upon the flipper and let it flip, now so long as the penny was placed in the exact same position every single time and there were no other variables, the penny would land on the same side every single time?

Another slightly more complex test is with a die, if you made a machine to spit out a die into the air onto a table, as long as no variables were changed the die would land on the same side everytime, not only that, but slow the die down and you'd see it take the exact same flight path, it would rotate the same, bounce in the exact same spot and on the exact same angle(s)?

Ok now for the ultimate test, the lottery, the lottery balls are always numbered 1(...)49. If the machine starts spinning the exact same speed and the balls are released at the same pace ect every single time, ok the balls would be bouncing around like mad and appear to be mixing up, but if the little sucker thing always took the first ball at say 10 seconds EXACTLY into the draw, it should always draw out the same ball if you ran the exact same test over and over again, without changing any variables... no matter for how long those balls bounced around the order they get mixed up in should never ever change.

I know the lottery isn't run like this and the times are alternated but true random doesn't exist... if a human could master the art of flipping a coin at the exact same speed, angle, height etc it would no longer be random.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Mathematicians couldn't care less if "true randomness" does not exist in the "real" world.
Mathematicians DEFINE the worlds they are working with, and there, true randomness can well exist.
 
But when we say flipping a coin is random, it isn't random at all, it seems random because humans are not precise machines but it certainy isn't random, neither is rolling a die. Or throwing a 52 deck of cards into the air and having them fall in the exact same place in the exact same order every single time...
 
Random posts need to go in your journal.
 

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