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Old 11-06-2005, 01:05 PM
gumpzilla gumpzilla is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 1,401
Default Re: How can randomness possibly exist?

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When I think of the universe, I think of the laws of science, and randomness doesn't seem possible to me. Some people may use the double slit experiment to prove randomness exists, but that is simply something we cannot determine, and is not necessarily something that cannot be determined with more knowledge.

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As it stands right now, it is a scientific, experimentally verified fact that theories that can explain away the randomness (so-called hidden variable theories) must be non-local, meaning they allow for superluminal influences between remote locations. As a result, most schemes you can come up with to try and explain how if we just knew a little more everything would be deterministic fail. For this reason, I think a lot of scientists think the randomness is here to stay. (You might try Googling "Is the moon there when nobody looks?" by David Mermin to read a little bit on this topic.)

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This is why I do not believe in free will.

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This seems like a pretty depressing worldview. If you don't believe in free will, how do you justify making large sums of money and not spreading it out among all the poor, helpless robots who are doomed to lead shitty existences because they are pre-determined to be jobless? It certainly doesn't seem like their fault, in this instance.
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