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#72
11-07-2005, 02:40 AM
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Re: How can randomness possibly exist?
[ QUOTE ]
"someone defined "random" simply as "we don't know". That was Not Ready. In one of his lucid moments. [/ QUOTE ] I am 100% positive I haven't read it here, although I'm not surprised that someone on this board stumbled across this definition too (or thought about it independently, of course). 
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#73
11-07-2005, 03:56 AM
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Re: How can randomness possibly exist?
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The randomness I am talking about only exists if such predictions are literally impossible even with complete knowledge of the system. If this randomness does not exist, then the entire history of the universe has already been determined. [/ QUOTE ] Part of my point was that even if you accept or insist on some deterministic model, still - until you don't know that _exact_ situation from which to start your "calculation" of the predetermined future (and of course, all the laws that govern that "calculation"), you are stuck in a land where you "don't know", and therefore, have to accept the existence of randomness in _your world_, which is all that matters. Even speaking about the _possibility_ of a predetermined universe is admitting the fact you don't know whether it is so or not, i.e, you already have some randomness in your system. In other words, there's no way for you to show or prove whether there is free-will or not, when your/our only possible _actual_ perspetive is of a human-being (it might be different if you are some kind of a completely different entity, but that's another story). You can only point out how free-will might be inconsistent with other assumptions in some specific set of arguments with regard to reality.
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#74
11-07-2005, 03:24 PM
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Re: How can randomness possibly exist?
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I'm talking randomness in the most extreme definition. Basically I'm saying that we have to assign probablities for things like atom decay simply because we don't have enough knowledge to know the outcome. The randomness I am talking about only exists if such predictions are literally impossible even with complete knowledge of the system. If this randomness does not exist, then the entire history of the universe has already been determined. [/ QUOTE ] What you are saying is if someone had all the knowledge of the universe he could accurately predict every event at every instance of time. However, that would require an outside observer, outside of the universe. Once inside, his own thought process would effect the events and disrupt the predictions. Therefore, some degree of randomness will always exist and thus so will free will.
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#75
11-07-2005, 03:59 PM
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Re: How can randomness possibly exist?
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Once inside, his own thought process would effect the events and disrupt the predictions. [/ QUOTE ] Not if his thought process is determined by natural causes. You are assuming what you're trying to prove.
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#76
11-07-2005, 04:46 PM
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Re: How can randomness possibly exist?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] Once inside, his own thought process would effect the events and disrupt the predictions. [/ QUOTE ] Not if his thought process is determined by natural causes. You are assuming what you're trying to prove. [/ QUOTE ] The thought process is determined by natural (chemical and electrical) causes and that is why it would effect the outcome. I don't think that you could include your own thought process in any calculation involving total knowledge (this is getting a little weird). That is why you would need someone outside of the universe (god if you will). But that is why I say if there is a god there is no free will - everything would be pre-determined and predictable as Zee stated.
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#77
11-07-2005, 05:36 PM
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Re: How can randomness possibly exist?
it will give you hawking's ideas about time and multiple universes and reality. will that answer your question? it is not an easy read, however.
perhaps a better book for you to read would be "Chaos" by a guy named Glick, i believe. the whole idea of "predetermined" goes out the window when you think there is room for every possibility and our free will chooses the one we believe we deserve. randomness however, is so different from what you are talking about. uncertainty says we can predict groups, but not the individual. we can say that in 100 attempts we will expect this many occurrences, but each attempt is unique, so you can't possibly guarantee a prediction of the outcome of anything that hasn't happened. In fact, you can't even predict the outcome of something that has happened, if you believe that all possibilities are still possible.
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#78
11-07-2005, 05:54 PM
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Re: How can randomness possibly exist?
[ QUOTE ]
But that is why I say if there is a god there is no free will - everything would be pre-determined and predictable as Zee stated. [/ QUOTE ] Predetermination by God doesn't exclude human free will.
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#79
11-07-2005, 10:08 PM
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Re: How can randomness possibly exist?
[ QUOTE ]
Basically I'm just saying that the fact that we will never be able to gather infinite knowledge as people does not matter. The fact that the solution is out there is what matters, even if we will never have the complete solution. [/ QUOTE ] Not only will we (i.e. humanity) never have a complete solution. No advanced alien race or super-powerful being will ever have a complete solution, either. Basically, the idea is that any language is countably infinite (a language is simply a set of finite strings). That is, you can map each string in the language to some natural number. But, the power set of languages is uncountably infinite. This implies that there are some languages that cannot be described in a finite manner. So, there are only countably many "solutions" (or algorithms) but uncountably many "problems." Therefore, there are uncountably many things that cannot possibly be described. I suck at explaining this, but try googling the words "countable," "uncountable," "cantor," "diagonalization" and perhaps "continuum hypothesis" for better explanations.
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#80
11-07-2005, 10:38 PM
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Re: How can randomness possibly exist?
Your post is fascinating because it shows the absolute dominance of scientific epistemology. That is, the only knowledge taken as valuable is that which is "scientific". Scientific here refers ostensibly to a sort of objectivity or unity of results, a repeatability, or something along those lines. Nobody really knows what makes some knowledge scientific, some borderline, and some not scientific. The logical positivist model, which seems to be what you are adopting is generally considered outdated (by me at least) by the philosophical work of Kuhn, Wittgenstein and even Derrida. The biggest question for a scientific epistemology is that of language and the sign. How is it that these objective and eternal truths, totally determined are communicated? With language. And what guarantees language (or a "meaningless" calculus) as perfectly referential to the objective reality that it is attempting to describe? Absolutely nothing. The material, social nature of the sign in its linguistic importance creates a gap for any form of linguistic knowledge. So the scientific epistemology is troubled and shouldn't necessarily be considered the only model. Once we move beyond it, that is, accept its limitations is quite easy to see how there might be probability. The heart of the matter is your tacit assumption that "reality," that to which truth corresponds is accurately and/or completely described by something unproblematically labelled science. Science is a linguistic and social phenomenon, and perhaps it is nothing more or less.
One thing that might be revelant is the scientific explanation of the forces: gravity, electromagnetic, strong and weak-nuclear. There really isn't any ... could there ever be? And if not, which is what I would contend (even if these were described, they would lead eventually to something unexplainable) we recognize a limit to scientific knowledge where we do not recongize an analogous limit to reality. We need either to accept a fundamental ignorance or find another way of knowing.
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