(side note: please use the [ q ] and [ /q ] tags, or use the "quote" function in the forum. It's much easier to follow than you sticking in lines prefaced with '>'.)
Originally posted by: Blouge
Proving the non-existence of a way of determining something also seems non-scientific and impossible at first glance, except perhaps in pure mathematics.
Yeah, it's kind of a problem. One of the reasons, I'm sure, why Quantum Mechanics has been (and continues to be) so controversial.
>not "we don't have the tools to determine it", but "not physically possible".
There are more advanced physics than QM in which more things are possible.
...well, there's a vague statement. Care to elaborate?
QM is a definitely flawed theory and therefore cannot fully explain the universe. No theory can - science merely makes models that are better and better approximations. Neither QM nor any successor can establish the existence of ultimate indeterminism, as it is a non-scientific, religious concept.
This is true. It is impossible to know if something is truly indeterminate, or merely impossible for us to distinguish from indeterminism because of a lack of knowledge.
>I know what a pseudorandom number generator is, and how it differs from a true source of randomness.
Great! You KNOW the difference between a deterministic pseudorandom number generator, and true indeterministic randomness. But can you MEASURE it? Can you experimentally distinguish between them? If I give you a computer printout with a stream of seemingly random numbers, can you conclusively rule out that its pseudorandom? No, you can't. You will struggle, checking countless pseudorandom number generators, and then you'll give up and say either "I don't know how these were generated". Or you'll say "Wow! This must be true randomness!" or "Wow, your pseudorandom number generator must be really complex!". Only the first of the three answers is acceptable; the others involve jumping to a conclusion based no evidence.
There are a number of mathematical tests you can do. Essentially, the stream is
not random if you are able to predict its later outputs based on earlier ones. If I am able to predict future outputs significantly better than chance, the numbers you are giving me are not random.
Well, at least they are probably not random. The more numbers you are given, the more confidence you can have in any statistical tests or conclusions about it. It is, however, impossible to be certain -- no matter how much data you are given or how well your conclusions seem to match up. But if an overwhelming volume of data seemed to indicate that the sequence is truly random or not, that would be a reasonable conclusion to draw.
You can't really be certain that a seemingly stochastic process you are observing is 'really' going to keep following the patterns you have seen it follow so far, either. This is a philosophical problem, not a scientific one. At some point you have to decide that you have enough evidence to make a conclusion, or else you will never be able to draw any conclusions about anything. And, of course, you should always keep an open mind about alternative explanations if some kind of evidence to the contrary shows up...
>You can't prove that there are truly random processes out there
Thanks, that's what I'm trying to say.
...and what
I'm trying to say is that you can't dismiss theories you don't like on those grounds, because you can't really "prove"
anything definitively through observation and prediction. While you can't definitively prove that QM is right (at least with our current knowledge) -- it
is possible to prove that QM is wrong, and nobody has been able to do that. Although nobody has reconciled it with GR either, so it's hardly a closed case.
From a practical perspective -- if there are phenomenon that behave in what appears to be a nondeterministic fashion, and the theory that best predicts that behavior concludes that this behavior is nondeterministic, it seems reasonable (lacking evidence to the contrary) to at least
consider that there could be truly nondeterministic behavior at work.
You couldn't be more wrong.
Maybe you didn't mean anything by your comment. But it's VERY easy to read what you wrote as insulting/denigrating, especially given how you just went right into it in the middle of directly responding to the previous poster's argument.
Saying "Einstein (who is implied to be brilliant) said X, but someone who was 'ignorant' might have come to a different conclusion" implies that anyone who disagrees with Einstein (and, by extension, you) is ignorant. You didn't use those exact words, but it's not hard to read what you wrote that way. Please be more careful with your choice of words and phrasing if you don't want people to misunderstand you.