Is anything truly random?

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: artikk

Originally posted by: Nathelion

Originally posted by: firewolfsm

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Everything is caused by something.

This is an assumption on your part. What makes an atom decay?

Radiation causes radioactive decay.

And if you ask why atoms radiate I'll bitch slap you.

Not true. Decay can also be caused by quantum tunneling, which is asserted as random by quantum theory. Thereby not saying it's proven as random. Maybe God is sitting behind the curtains of the universe pulling strings. But at that point, it becomes a philosophical question rather than a scientific one.

Isn't radiation caused by the instability in the atomic nucleus? Too many neutrons and protons packed together in one small spherical region. Just a possibility.

That's one way. Another is that the atom is in an excited state and is seeking the minimum energy state. Spontaneous emission will emit radiation but requires no external stimuli for it to occur. Well, outside stimuli with the exception of raising the electon(s) to an excited state, but the act of emission may or may not be stimulated.

 

[Markbnj]

On a side note, years ago I published a backgammon game for Windows. In it I initially used Borland's C library rand() function to generate die rolls. I got a large number of complaints about bias toward the computer. I thought perhaps the lib function wasn't the best, and after all backgammon is a game that depends on the randomness of those rolls. So I did a little research and got my hands on a function from CMU that purported to generate an even higher degree of entropy in the number stream than the commonly available lib functions. I released an update, and still got a large number of complaints. I then released some source code and a description of the architecture showing that the program was designed not to know what kind of player was asking for a dice roll. I also ran some tests and showed that over 100 million rolls the engine produced an almost flat distribution of values. I still got a crapload of complaints. Many of these discussions are still archived in various places online. A well-known columnist on SQL database issues even grabbed onto the debate for a piece in... DDJ I think it was.

So I learned that the converse of some of the points in this discussion is also true: some things we think are not very random actually are .

I tend to agree with the camp that thinks randomness is a purely philosophical metric, and that it may not exist in any meaningful form outside of our own heads and computer programs.

Another question that comes to mind: isn't perceived randomness affected by your frame of reference? If an identity thief stalks you and steals your identity, from his point of view it was the least random event in history. From yours it was a bolt out of the blue.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

imo, randomness goes beyond the philosophical realm. Quantum behaviour and the randomness of particles is an absolute necessity. Without it there would be no such thing as chance in our universe. Everything would be predetermined and destined to have a specific outcome. We wouldn't even have free thought. The future would, at least theoreticallly if not in practice, be entirely predictable.

As to whether the randomness of particles and quantum behaviour is "truly" random, that seems more like a semantic discussion than anything else.

 

[Markbnj]

Everything would be predetermined and destined to have a specific outcome. We wouldn't even have free thought. The future would, at least theoreticallly if not in practice, be entirely predictable.

We don't know that we do, and we don't know that it isn't . That's sort of the frame of reference point I was making earlier. Still, I think you're probably right in that at some deep mechanical level things operate randomly. It's just that we can never really know; it's semantics, as you said.

 

[BadRobot]

Originally posted by: Markbnj

Everything would be predetermined and destined to have a specific outcome. We wouldn't even have free thought. The future would, at least theoreticallly if not in practice, be entirely predictable.

We don't know that we do, and we don't know that it isn't . That's sort of the frame of reference point I was making earlier. Still, I think you're probably right in that at some deep mechanical level things operate randomly. It's just that we can never really know; it's semantics, as you said.

I don't think it is random even at a deep mechanical level. Humans making a choise is as random as it gets but even those decisions are based on prior experience and that even if you magically went back in time and you observed yourself making that decision 100 times I BELIEVE that it would be the same everytime. This cannot be tested obviously and that is why I used the word believe a moment ago.

I like what Modelworks said even if it is a bit simplistic.

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Everything is caused by something.
If its caused by something else, how can it be random ?

 

[bwanaaa]

the interesting thing is that the letters of this sentence when subjected to a statistical test, are a sequence that is not significantly different from random. But they clearly have meaning.

 

[gururu2]

Originally posted by: bwanaaa
the interesting thing is that the letters of this sentence when subjected to a statistical test, are a sequence that is not significantly different from random. But they clearly have meaning.

asfkdmpoa aefoafo aofefaof kgtirtg sgkfgont jkfsofg sfkjgjos hmhtoeps hsohsrt sikgosmg sorgnti e;giid kg skh lirog ligtoring lniutune hnid.

this might appear to be random as well. but it is not.

 

[WildHorse]

On one side you have statistical randomness, and in opposition to that on the other side you have Carl Jung's idea of synchronicity.

Those do not reconcile.

 

[dpert1]

Schrodingers Cat

 

[brokencase]

Originally posted by: bwanaaa
the interesting thing is that the letters of this sentence when subjected to a statistical test, are a sequence that is not significantly different from random. But they clearly have meaning.

Not quite true. Only when I apply (good) data compression to your sentence does it become undicernable from randomness.

Which begs the question, Is all random noise actually compressed data?

 

[Nathelion]

There are a lot of alternative definitions of randomness, whether anything is random depends on which one you use.

The ones I think are important are:

Subjective randomness - the kind that we experience every day. Suppose I first decide I'm going to kill a certain person, then lock him/her into a room along with 99 other people, tell them I'm going to kill one of them and then let the rest go, and, after letting them brood on this for awhile, go in and kill the guy i was planning to kill all along and let the rest go. Now to the people in the room, my decision on whom to kill was effectively random, because they have no information with which to determine it ahead of time. Does that mean that it was actually random? Of course not, I decided who my victim was going to be in advance, so it was already determined. Randomness in this sense is simply a matter of access to information. If you have access to enough information to predict a certain thing, then it is not random. If you don't have that information, it is random. End of story.

Objective randomness - here we're dealing with whether a certain event could be predicted even with unlimited access to information. For every phenomenon we are familiar with in our daily lives, the answer is yes, everything could be predicted by an entity with access to the right information. The only phenomena to be commonly held to be random in this sense are those of quantum physics, where current paradigm holds that certain events cannot be predicted, because there is no causal relationship between these events and other events (in our universe).

Statistical randomness - others have already talked about this.

Another, not directly applicable, but still related, topic is chaos theory. Over time, even very small deviations between two sets of initial data will grow exponentially in a chaotic system. The world around us most certainly seems to be a chaotic system, so one would need perfect initial data to be able to predict a physical system. Again, we run into problems with quantum physics - the Heisenberg Uncertainty Relation does not permit such "perfect initial data".

 

[wantedSpidy]

Brownian Motion?

 

[SunSamurai]

True randomness is relative to the level of ignorance of that witch tries to comprehend it.


That is all.

 

[SunSamurai]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard

Originally posted by: KIAman
An atom's movement follow all of the rules of physics. If we know the position and velocity of the atom, we can easily predict its future location. Atoms are relatively macroscopic.

This isn't necessarily true. The magnitude of Brownian forces is readily computed, but the direction is not deterministic.

Yet what do you base that off of? Lack of evidence it would seem, and that is hardly a level of relevant discussion I would say.

To say it is not deterministic is fooly. How is one to prove something like that? To prove that is has no govern is to at the same time revealing the very governing factors of why it moves how it does in the first place.

Also, to those saying it is an 'assumption' that saying there is no such thing as a random act are foolish, as 100% of things that are finally understood and discovered have pointed to cause and effect.

I believe that the one truth about every universe that can exist is that cause and effect are the basic nature of both that which exists and that which does not. This is what makes pondering what was before the beginning of time extremely fascinating.

 

[imported_bearfx]

I used to believe things could be random. Then I started playing dungeons and dragons.

I learned the universe is conspiring with the dice to kill me.

 

[bwanaaa]

after reading this thread over and over time, i think that randomeness is like a statistical measure-like the median, the mean, the standard deviation,etc. Except those quantities are measures of the behavior of a specific population. Randomess is an intrinsic measure - when any statistical tests are done, they measure how different a population is from randm - that word is always cropping up in statistics. If randomnss is the unit against which statistics are leveraged-then rndomness must represent the unit value of populations-like the number , o, in the number system. The number zero is a chameleon like character that somehow has no value but exists- it exists by virtue of its absence and is used in comparisons between two expressions.

Contemplating the randm behavior of an individual is undefined-like trying to divide by zero, or like trying to determine the correct spelling of rndom by looking at all of the occurrences of that word in this reply.

 

[wwswimming]

this is one of those "butterfly effect" kinds of questions.

just don't end up on your knees in prison like Demi Moore's boyfriend.
(was Ashton Kuchner in the Butterfly Effect ? is he Demi's boyfriend ?)

 

[SunSamurai]

Originally posted by: TastesLikeChicken
imo, randomness goes beyond the philosophical realm. Quantum behaviour and the randomness of particles is an absolute necessity. Without it there would be no such thing as chance in our universe. Everything would be predetermined and destined to have a specific outcome. We wouldn't even have free thought. The future would, at least theoreticallly if not in practice, be entirely predictable.

As to whether the randomness of particles and quantum behaviour is "truly" random, that seems more like a semantic discussion than anything else.

There _is_ no such thing as chance in _any_ universe. Through laws of physics may change from one reality to another, structure remains. The only freedom is that precived

All chance lies in what we do not know. God does not play dice with the universe.

 

[SunSamurai]

Originally posted by: bwanaaa
after reading this thread over and over time, i think that randomeness is like a statistical measure-like the median, the mean, the standard deviation,etc. Except those quantities are measures of the behavior of a specific population. Randomess is an intrinsic measure - when any statistical tests are done, they measure how different a population is from randm - that word is always cropping up in statistics. If randomnss is the unit against which statistics are leveraged-then rndomness must represent the unit value of populations-like the number , o, in the number system. The number zero is a chameleon like character that somehow has no value but exists- it exists by virtue of its absence and is used in comparisons between two expressions.

Contemplating the randm behavior of an individual is undefined-like trying to divide by zero, or like trying to determine the correct spelling of rndom by looking at all of the occurrences of that word in this reply.

No, 0 does not exist. The symbol representing it, an avatar if you will, does. The same can be said for chance. Give it a symbol, and for the sake of math and science, 'go with it' for experiments.

It is nothing but a tool. Fractions do not exist either. Nothing can come of part of any whole. Half an apple is perception that an apple is a whole of something, when in reality, there is no apple, there are no atoms, there is, however, the smallest possible indivisible element making up that apple, no matter how long it takes to discover that element is irrelevant to its existence.

How many different ways are you trying to spell 'randomness'?

 

[bwanaaa]

@aeternitas

that was my point-that the concept of random does not apply to individual or units. it is an abstraction of behavior of a population. just as apple is a description of a population of specific molecules.

the embedded example in the preceding reply of misspelling the word random was an attempt to illustrate the concept.

 

[Albert Franklin]

Hello everyone

This discussion fascinated me enough that I registered for this forum, not even knowing what it is? Computer builds maybe? That's fine. I like that.

Anyway! To the original topic. Is anything truly random?

I have been considering this question for a while. I'll try to limit my response to just the question of "can a truly random number ever be generated?" save where I use metaphor to illustrate my point. I'll also make no warrant as to competence in this discussion and admit I come at this from a philosophical perspective. I hope therefore you will forgive ignorant assumptions and the like and any confused use of terminology

So - what is random? It must be something that cannot be predicted my any existing or potential system of mathematical understanding. For if we can find it in the field of mathematics (or any other field) through a known or knowable process, then it cannot be random. A question I ask immediately is "does quantum theory dispute it?" However I will leave quantum theory as I am entirely unqualified to make any unsolicited comment on it. I will make the observation that this field seems to be based on the premise of a different set of rules (or more appropriately, a previously unknown but ultimately complementary set of rules or principles or laws).

Taking the Big Bang as an acceptable premise (forgive me if it is not, but indulge me nonetheless) and also that Higgs boson has been discovered, or at least deemed discoverable then our theoretical models would seem to have a structure and a beginning and therefore rules that emanate from the original creation. These rules must be derived from the physical effects of creation. Who or what set those rules is another discussion. But can we accept that they must have existed in order for an entire universe to created that allowed for relatively quantifiable or predictable analysis by our monkey brains.

This isn't to say our existing axioms, laws, theories etc present anything of a definitive state of being. They do, however, point to such a thing. Yes, we cannot calculate certain variables with absolute precision but it does seem that know where to look. If I were to tell the world (truthfully) that I had buried gold in "a random location in Central Park" would the subsequent finding of it be random? To an extent perhaps, but not ultimately. The best we can call it is "arbitrary". But if such a thing is determinable then it must have emanated from something which is quantifiable. Otherwise surely it is possible that I could have found Higgs in my sock draw.

My conclusion, uninformed as it may be, is that one cannot generate a random number save by creating a new number. One that is outside the strictures of our knowledge of the universe. I posit that we cannot do that. But were we to encounter such a number it would be a discovery of something new, not something "random". Indeed, the very word seems to me to be a human construct akin to God, to explain the unknown.

There are holes in the above post and I apologise for them, but welcome pushbacks that inform my thinking and advance discussion. If I've omitted anything that was a key discussion point please bring it up. I've already written an essay by accident...

A. F.

 

[sao123]

I point you here for a laymans analysis:
http://www.random.org/analysis/

So, why is it hard to test whether a given sequence of numbers is random? The reason is that if your random number generator (or your die) is good, each possible sequence of values (or die rolls) is equally likely to appear. This means that a good random number generator will also produce sequences that look nonrandom to the human eye (e.g., a series of ten rolls of six on our die) and which also fail any statistical tests that we might expose it to. If you flip enough coins, you will get sequences of coin flips that seen in isolation from the rest of the sequence don't look random at all.

theoretically, I believe that true randomness could only come from a physical manifestation of high state of entropy on a macroscopic level...

 

[Dude111]

Everything is caused by something.

Exactly right.....



Nothing is random here!

 

[Paul98]

Given our knowledge of relativity and quantum physics. If randomness doesn't exist then we will be able to send information instantly over large distances using quantum entanglement.

I used to not believe in things being truly random, I thought that if you knew all the causes and effects you could know the results of so call random things. But then I began to learn about quantum physics and it has moved me away from believing in things being predetermined, and I do believe there are lots of things that are random.

I seem to remember someone talking about an idea to use quantum spin to get true random numbers for a computer.

 

[Pilotavery]

Schrodingers Cat

Heisenberg and Schrodinger were driving in a car, and they got pulled over. The cop asks "Do you know how fast you were going sir?"
Heisenberg responds, "No, but I can tell you exactly where I was..."

The officer thinks its grounds for a search, and so be opens the trunk, and finds a dead cat in the trunk! "Did you know you have a dead cat in your trunk!?!"

Schrodinger said, "Well... I do now.