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Author
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Topic: Does randomness ride on ignorance?
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John A. Davison
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Member # 1425
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posted 08. December 2006 12:46
The only place where randomness plays a role is in quantum mechanics. At all higher levels determinism is the rule.
"Everything is determined...by forces over which we have no control."
Albert Einstein
"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."
John A. Davison
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Matt Connally
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Member # 3076
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posted 09. December 2006 23:57
What if, instead of saying that randomness "rides on" ignorance, we simply said it is inseparable from ignorance. After all, the very concepts nuance one another to the extent that you cannot define one without having the other in context. Thus randomness, though it is a perfectly coherent and unique concept, always comes in degrees and is never infinite.
Bear with me for trying to put them into greater context. Picture an XYZ axis where X is polarized by randomness/determination (determined as by an algorithm, etc.), Y is polarized by knowledge/ignorance, and Z is polarized by freedom/slavery.
Again, in this example each concept is perfectly unique and coherent and yet inseparable from the others (in the way that, say, the number 7 is perfectly unique and coherent, yet my 4-yr-old cannot learn what the concept of 7 means unless he also learns what the concepts of 5, 6, 8, etc. mean.)
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Klaus Lange
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Member # 3101
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posted 13. December 2006 04:45
Randomness - for me - depends on the perspective of the observer.
For someone who is part of the system he observe much processes looks like lawless and/or directionless.
But for someone who stands outside the system the direction of some movements or processes are very clear.
Let me try to explain it on the "cat of Schroedinger".
You know that story I think:
It depends on random radioactive decay: Does the cat in the black box keep alive or not? Or both?
Its our problem to this point we opens the box, because we are a part of this quantum universe.
But what does with some outside of this quantum universe? What does with a hypothetical designer of this universe? Does he have any problems to know about the cats situation in the black box? No, because for him no boxes are "black".
Playing dice
In our perspective the universe looks like a casino table and the particles on it looks like dices, we don't know about the next results.
Someone think that God uses our universe to play dice.
But he stands outside of his designed universe and he knows about the next result of the dices before he plays.
For him no "true randomness" exist.
For us "true randomness" is only a principle lack of information.
[ 13. December 2006, 09:29: Message edited by: Klaus Lange ]
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Klaus Lange
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Member # 3101
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posted 09. January 2007 09:06
On NewScientist I found a very interesting paper about free will and randomness.
T'Hooft makes a big point on mathematical calculations that the quantum randomness was not the fundamental layer of our world. Behind the scene our world works deterministic.
Look at this:
Article from t'Hooft about 'free will' in NewScientist
I agree with the conclusion that it is a populare mistake thinking quantum randomness is the source of 'free will'. The reason is, that on a naturalistic point of view we have the 'choice' to be deterministic machines or random machines. Both alternatives didn't gave us a playground for free choices. We are objects on deterministic laws of nature and/or of natural random processes.
If we trust in free will, than we have to understand, that this 'free will' was a non-naturalistic gift, a 'spiritual add on' and not a natural function of our brain.
We don't need randomness for a free will but a spiritual, non-natural layer, that determines the nerves and synapses of our braines to transport the will from our spirit to our brain and body interacting with this natural world (I think John C. Eccles descriped that mechanism very well: The spirit manipulates the amplitudes of propability for the quantum processes in our brain).
In that context we can see the free will as a spiritual design signal.
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