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Abdul-fattah
a.k.a Steve  Usergroup: Members Joined: Jun 21, 2007 Location: Belgium Total Topics: 5 Total Posts: 145 |
 #11
Hi Ibrahim, I disagree on your defenition of randomness. I realise that it is commonly used to refer to unpredictable processes, such as the outcome of a lotery or the pick of a card, but these processes are causal. They follow strict causality. The outcome of the card for example, will not only depend on chemical processes in the brain, but can also depend on factors such as: the hand you pick with, which card sticks more then the other, what order they are aranged in, the method in which they are displayed, and so on. But it is still clearly causal. If it were possibble to pick a card a million time, and each time with the exact same circumstances then we will pick the same card over and over! Now I agree that human knowledge is to limited to predict all those things, but that doesn't mean they are unpredictable in nature. They are unpredictable to us. But just as a tree falling in a wood with noone there to hear it produces soundwaves, so is the pick of the cards predictable even though noone is around that can predict it. Oh, coming back on the gravity thing for a sec. If the gravitational constant would be something random as you implied, how could it be constant? Wouldn't it be the gravitational variable then instead? www.seemyparadigm.webs.com |
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psychopath
Aspirant  Usergroup: Members Joined: May 03, 2007 Total Topics: 7 Total Posts: 32 |
#12
I think we need to understand that just because you cannot predict certain things with newtonian physics doesn't mean it is random. Einstein showed that Newtonian physics is wrong anyway. Newton described how big objects move, not small. Some people say that if you cannot detect something, it does not exist. But the thing is, just because you have limited technology doesn't mean that it is not detectable. Quantum physics or randomness does not explain black holes, neither does it unify the fundamental forces. I bet there are thousands of other variables we do not currently know about that affects the random card, and just because you haven't found them yet it doesn't mean they don't exist. |
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rabeldin
Probabalistic Philosopher  Usergroup: Members Joined: Oct 06, 2003 Location: Puerto Rico Total Topics: 29 Total Posts: 5427 |
#13
We create randomness when we say of something "It doesn't matter." We create a model of how we think the world works. If there are elements which seem unpredictable, unexplainable, we call them "random" and say they "don't matter". N.N.Taleib calls this "class 1 randomness" and it is governed by rules like the "Law of Large Numbers". At least in the practical sense, randomness exists. Is that what you want to deny? Leave no assumption unquestioned. |
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Abdul-fattah
a.k.a Steve Usergroup: Members Joined: Jun 21, 2007 Location: Belgium Total Topics: 5 Total Posts: 145 |
#14
Not at all, the only thing I wish to deny is that things happen without cause, as it is sometimes assumed when speaking of random. www.seemyparadigm.webs.com |
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Roman Candle
Une barque sur l'ocean  Usergroup: Members Joined: May 20, 2007 Location: London Total Topics: 5 Total Posts: 41 |
#15
Say a blind and deaf person is walking in a room. There are people running all around him moving the walls. The person can know that he is being affected, when he hits the walls, but he can not corrolate this with the position of the walls, (since he cannot see them). To him, hitting a wall is a random event. Without having some other event to link it with, he can never predict it. Randomness can exist, and is a relative property. In the case of quantum physics, we might know effects, but perhaps the causes of these effects do not affect the universe at large. What if only a single variable of some bizzare object alters the universe, while others do not alter the universe, but do alter this variable which has a perceivable effect. To an object in the universe, the event caused is random. What if another blind man is investigating the properties of an object. When light hits the object, it heats up. However, unable to perceive light, the blind man can never see the heating up as anything other than random. Light does not affect him; he can not understand it except in terms of this mysterious heating. It has no existance relative to him. And since the cause of the heating has no existence to him, the heating is random, (to him). However, to an observer who could see the light, the heating would not be random. (Of course this example breaks down because light, heat, sound etc are all linked, but let's just pretend they're not) T.S. Elliot wrote:
La lune ne garde aucune rancune |
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ssu
Assistant Professor Usergroup: Members Joined: Jun 02, 2007 Location: north Total Topics: 5 Total Posts: 275 |
#16
Abdul-fattah, you pinpoint the big problem in randomness when you say that we cannot prove something to be random. My view is, that we cannot accept random processes because our logical understanding of causality prevents this. In other words, we cannot see how there could be both a causal relationship and that the relationship would be random at the same time. When we make observations of the world and try to make sense of them, we do use causality. And oh yes, once when we have found a causal relationship we have to prove to others why we have come to our conclusions. So giving a proof of a causal relationship is very important in every science. Thus the debate about randomness, and the follow up questions usually go like the following: Complexity fan: "There's so much randomness in nature..." Ultra-reductionist: "HA! Give me a proof of that! In every case you fractal-loving chaotic butterfly wingclappers come up with your fuzzy logic, we just don't have all the information! If we had that, no problem for us true scientists! Remember, everything has a cause." Complexity fan: "But quantum..." Ultra-reductionist: "...Mechanics predicts with great accuracy and precision. Just using a statistical method or probability theory in modelling reality doesn't prove your point at all! In Physics we're just about to find TOE, so be patient." Complexity fan: "But a Turing Machine cannot compute..." Ultra-reductionist: "Who knows what we can compute in the future? There might be networks of Busy-Beaver-SuperTuring-Oracle machines using quantum computing that perform supertasks as easily that we now eat a hot-dog. Anti-Heisenberg devices from Star Trek might be reality someday. Don't be so pessimistic towards the possibilities of future technology! Or are you anti-science?" Complexity fan: "Then there's Gödel's Incompleteness theorem and even then we have these paradoxes..." Ultra-reductionist: "Ahhh... Gödel's results are only obscurities from the furthest fields in mathematics that have no importance whatsoever to the true scientist. They are so difficult that people missunderstand them. And the Paradoxes have been around for thousands of years and they only confuse children and philosophers. Paradoxes have been solved by limits and Set theory, so my math which I use is on a firm basis. Besides, I do science and not ponder about philosophy!" |
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Ibrahim
seeker of nothing  Usergroup: Members Joined: Jul 10, 2006 Location: Washington State, USA Total Topics: 28 Total Posts: 374 |
#17
I must say that I am shocked at how dogmatic people are concerning knowledge, causality and certainty. Probability is far more pragmatic for two reasons: It accounts for human error and it is a more general case where certainty can be one specific instance. Causality is a metaphysical framework of which we have no certainty what so ever, any one vaguely familiar with Hume or Kant knows this. Cause and effect is a habitual intuitive conceptualization of the conjunction of appearances and designates its order. It has no base in reason as being certain ( since all empirical facts are contingent and not necessary), nor does it posses any metaphysical privilege. Not only do we need probabilistic frameworks because they are pragmatic and useful, but because they espouse a particular attitude which does not assume three things: 1- That " knowledge" in any form is certain. 2- That Knowledge is "objective," or unchanged by the subject's observation. 3- avoids the shipwreck of metaphysics to a greater degree, unless one is so argumentative that they would deny possibility as a principle. All human endeavors that are looked at with any skepticism point us away from certainty: the problem of induction ( Hume), Transcendental categories ( Kant), and the constantly changing nature of knowledge. The pervasive dogmatic adherence to causality and necessary immutable connections is a nasty after taste left to us from Christianity which postulated a world of divine logos and certainty in all things, and I hope more people eventually open their eyes and become more skeptical and simultaneously more pragmatic in abandoning this old hat. "And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh"--Nietzsche |
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ssu
Assistant Professor Usergroup: Members Joined: Jun 02, 2007 Location: north Total Topics: 5 Total Posts: 275 |
#18
People can be dogmatic, because they can circumvent the philosophical problems brought up by Hume and Kant (mentioned here by Ibrahim) just by saying they are only "making hypothesis" and their answers are only "theories" and when cornered by a philosopher they accept that yes, they don't have and cannot have absolute certainty. Yet in truth, the theories used become to be seen practically as laws by many. And once you have a law, there's no reason to try make a critique against it. Hence the Cartesian view that randomness is due only to our ignorance of the true nature of reality persists and will persist. The believers of the Cartesian view will reject altogether the notion of randomness. |
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Ibrahim
seeker of nothing Usergroup: Members Joined: Jul 10, 2006 Location: Washington State, USA Total Topics: 28 Total Posts: 374 |
#19
ssu wrote: People can be dogmatic, because they can circumvent the philosophical problems brought up by Hume and Kant (mentioned here by Ibrahim) just by saying they are only "making hypothesis" and their answers are only "theories" and when cornered by a philosopher they accept that yes, they don't have and cannot have absolute certainty. Yet in truth, the theories used become to be seen practically as laws by many. And once you have a law, there's no reason to try make a critique against it. Hence the Cartesian view that randomness is due only to our ignorance of the true nature of reality persists and will persist. The believers of the Cartesian view will reject altogether the notion of randomness. Who was a devout Christian that believed non-Christians were condemned. His " cogito ergo sum," is the farthest thing from certainty. Newton was also a devout Christian. Don't get me wrong, they are both brilliant and profound thinkers and I love their books. However, they just simply failed to consider the possibility that God does not exist in the universal legislative sense, and that mathematical models are only "laws" in so far as they are assumptions. Long ago, the sun and stars revolved around the earth. After Copernicus, Newton and Kepler, we revolve around the sun due to unseen and strictly unobservable gravitational forces of which we only see effect. Incipit Einstein, and after him, who knows what. What you so naively call "laws," are assumptions because they are inductive in inference. One day, and as long as people remain curious, inquisitive, skeptical and above all open to broader frameworks such as the realm of possibility and probability which define chance ( and includes inductive semi certainty such as Newtons laws), then that day will come. God is dead to science and hence there is no cosmic legislation by some will that dictated e=mc^2 or F=ma. These are pragmatic human projections of mathematical models, and very efficacious ones at that. The frame work of causality is absolutely indispensable to Science as well as to everyday life, but it ultimately remains in the realm of what is possible. Randomness is not non-reason, arbitrariness and the lack of a desire for precision and profound science as many such as yourself believe. It is rather an openness to possibility, a playful curiosity the tickles the spirit and wishes that our world will forever be a cosmic playground with new goals, endeavors and possibilities. "And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh"--Nietzsche |
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psychopath
Aspirant Usergroup: Members Joined: May 03, 2007 Total Topics: 7 Total Posts: 32 |
#20
Those of you that claim that something can happen without a cuase, you still fail to provide evidence. Why should others believe in something that has no evidence? |
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