How can randomness possibly exist?

[Borodog]

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Ok, I'm slow. Apparently the atomic clock does not measure time based on the decay of atoms, but instead based on the wavelike movement of electrons inside the atom. Can someone just confirm this for me to make sure I'm understanding it correctly?

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Not quite. When an electron in an atom drops to a lower energy level, radiation is emitted. That radiation has a specific frequency. Combined with the (constant) speed of light, this provides the most accurate known measures of time.

[ZeeJustin]

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As far as books go, how knoweldgable on math/physics are you?

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I took AP physics and AP calc in high school, but only went to college for a semester before dropping out.

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We have one Deuterium atom (An atom with one proton and one neutron). Deutrium is radioactive, and we want to know when this atom will decay.

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According to Wikipedia , Deuterium is stable.


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Ok, sorry, I was under the impression that deuterium was radioactive, (just with a verry long halflife). But I havn't looked at that stuff in a long time. If i am wrong (which it appears i am, just substitute any other radioactive atom into my first post and my point should work fine.

[bearly]

people have a problem when they take you at your word? perhaps taking a gratuitous swipe at my reading comprehension is not the way to go (you wouldn't know)...........maybe some writing practice is in order. how's about something like "i don't know if there is free will or not, but my studies and musings have me thinking that there is not". there, now that leaves you lots of 'outs' as you poker champions like to say...............b

[garion888]

First of all...deuterium is incredibly stable. It is in no way radioactive. Without that stability...none of us would be here.

I am looking at the definitions of random and I was wondering which one you think is impossible.

1. Having no specific pattern, purpose or objective.
2. Of or relating to a type of circumstance or event that is described by a probability distribution.

Definition 2 is the one we generally talk about in physics. If there is a white marble and a black marble in a bag and we choose one of them without looking, there is a 50% chance that the marble in our hand is black and a 50% chance it is white. Let's do a gedanken experiment. If I choose a marble from the bag(and replace it) 100 times, is there any way you can predict in advance how many times I am going to choose white? If I do the experiment twice, am I going to pick white the same number of times? The rules of the experiment are the same everytime yet there is no way I can predict what the outcome is going to be.

If this demonstrates randomness to you that is good. If not I can come up with more examples...

Thanks,
-J

[ZeeJustin]

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First of all...deuterium is incredibly stable. It is in no way radioactive. Without that stability...none of us would be here.

I am looking at the definitions of random and I was wondering which one you think is impossible.

1. Having no specific pattern, purpose or objective.
2. Of or relating to a type of circumstance or event that is described by a probability distribution.

Definition 2 is the one we generally talk about in physics. If there is a white marble and a black marble in a bag and we choose one of them without looking, there is a 50% chance that the marble in our hand is black and a 50% chance it is white. Let's do a gedanken experiment. If I choose a marble from the bag(and replace it) 100 times, is there any way you can predict in advance how many times I am going to choose white? If I do the experiment twice, am I going to pick white the same number of times? The rules of the experiment are the same everytime yet there is no way I can predict what the outcome is going to be.

If this demonstrates randomness to you that is good. If not I can come up with more examples...

Thanks,
-J

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I'm not sure that either of these defintions are accurate to what my OP is about. The second one certianly isn't.

I guess unpredictability given infinite knowledge is what I'm talking about. I don't think such a thing exists. I think the entire outcome of all the particles in the universe has already been determined. We certainly don't have the knowledge to predict that outcome, but hypothetically, the answer exists.

[garion888]

Can I ask where you get this "feeling" from. I want to really understand what you're saying so I can argue effectively.

If you re-read my earlier post, I tried to create a simple universe. This universe contains a bag, two marbles, and me. I have "infinite knowledge" of the system right? All I have to do know is show that there is something about the system that I cannot predict. I chose to use the result of 100 choices of the marble from the bag.

Alternatively I could show that there is no such thing as "infinite knowledge." You talked about the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle before. One version of this principle states that if you know one thing really precisely(position) then that knowledge comes at the expense of the precision of knowledge of another thing(momentum). In effect, no observer can know everything about a system to begin with, so there is no challenge to the existence of randomness.

[DougShrapnel]

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I guess unpredictability given infinite knowledge is what I'm talking about. I don't think such a thing exists. I think the entire outcome of all the particles in the universe has already been determined. We certainly don't have the knowledge to predict that outcome, but hypothetically, the answer exists.

[/ QUOTE ] Infinite knowledge is not possible. We know this to be true. Infinite knowledge, of course, would forbid randomness. Your problem is not with randomness but your belief that infinite knowledge is possible.

[hmkpoker]

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At present the evidence is that at a quatum level there IS randomness, so to base an argument on "I can't think how .." seems to leap ahead of the evidence. Now, with the M-string brane theories perhaps some hidden variables will show up ( there's been some strong cases made that they can't show up )

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I talked to a physics major who's studying quantum right now, and the way he discussed it, it said it is more likely that the randomness is merely apparent due to the lack of precision in our measurement tools, and hidden variables. Even in the scientific world, the jury is still out.

I'm not saying that there isn't true randomness at the quantum level. I'm not saying there is. I'm saying that I don't know, and that you probably don't either. Quantum physics gets tossed around like a hacky-sack whenever there's a deterministic argument by people who really don't know dick about it.

On both occasions when I held a discussion group IRL on free will vs determinism, it ALWAYS boiled down to the libertarians saying "science says I'm right" and the determinists saying "no it doesn't."

It will be a VERY long time, if ever, that science conclusively proves the existence of randomness that is not attributable to lack of precision in measuring tools. I think we need to accept that this is something that is a little beyond our comprehension.

[garion888]

Not to insult your friend, but...

Who is this physics major and how the hell is he passing quantum with the thought anywhere near his brain that the randomness discussed in that class has anything to do with a measuring device...

There is uncertainty in every measurement. If I have a ruler with 1mm an acceptable amount of uncertainty in my measurement is .5mm. There is uncertainty inherent in every measuring device. It has to do with how graduated your device is.

This experimental uncertainty is very different from the randomness implied by quantum mechanics. The uncertainty principle is not stated, it is derived. This says that no matter how graduated your instrument is, there is a limit to the precision of an instrument that has nothing to do with the instrument but with the universe in which the instrument exists.