Does True Randomness Actually Exist?

I have always tried to fight against illusion here so I do understand what you mean. I'll leave it there. I wish you a good night or good day or whatever it is where you are. Have to go.

@noodles, I am very surprised you would have received "death threats". I don't recall even a complaint about this (which would merit strong action).

He had a brief moment of television fame when he was about 12. I found him once surrounded by about a hundred kids and some of them were threatening him. I just basically had to put my arm round him and lead him away. No-one would try to touch me. I think the experience upset him more than I thought. It didn't put him off having famous people as friends, though, especially in the rock world. He played with Pink Floyd, knew members of Soft Machine. Plus various American beat poets and so on. He was quite a good musician and a decent poet. Knew about nine languages including Sanskrit, which he learned so he could read the Vedas in the original. Goodnight, anyhow. My wife's standing over me like a rather critical, Avenging Angel.

Elroch - That was way back when I was a member of OD the first time. 

Right, well before when I was convinced to become an admin. It used to be appalling when the attitude was that there were no limits on communication. It is very different these days (and very little action needs to be taken to keep it so, amazingly!)

Does True Randomness Actually Exist?
IMHO
Randomness is the unidentified pattern of some form of energy / matter.
Identification of patterns has already been succeeded observing the whole universe.
Pi 3,14..., Phi 1.618039..., Planck's constant, gravitational forces, tides, you name it.
Randomness exists in the eyes of those who do not possess identification of patterns.
Nash obsserved this with flock of pigeons, Poincare understood (with the butterfly
effect) that we may know all the variables but it is highly unlikely to correctly
make mathematical models. Yet chaos is a very precise and complex to compute.
It is for the reason of complexity to the accuracy of human computations and
NOT unpredictability that chaos, randomness does not exist yet all variables are
hard to compute to legible patterns to the eyes/mind of the common observer.
So true randomness does not exist, as all energy behaves in specific models
which either have not yet been discovered or have been discovered and are
difficult to compute due to the number of variables existing and not recognized yet.

Perhaps you are forgetting that quantum mechanics involves the sort of randomness that can never be removed, and that everything is made of quantum mechanics, so to speak!

Well, I doubt I will ever be back in OD! 

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 Elroch  
0 #426 
Perhaps you are forgetting that quantum mechanics involves the sort of randomness that can never be removed, and that everything is made of quantum mechanics, so to speak!
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In quantum mechanics the coin is flipped in both sides, in quantum computing qbits are both 0 and 1 at the same time. These are given positions not of the unpredictability of their positions but for their precise function of their dualistic properties. Even when speaking for the dead cat in the box as a thought experiment the cat is both alive and dead but the problem persists to be stedifast dualistic even at the double slit experiment, where the particles react as waves or
particles depending on the observing status after the slit. This we know as a fact and it is
not something random, although it is a paradox of our todays mathematical models.
For practical scientists who have not yet found the models this is called superdeterminism.
YET it is given as a theory from other scientists like Hossenfelder.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.01324

The reason we think randomness exists is that it's apparently impossible to predict patterns. If it's apparently impossible, that means it looks like it is impossible, to the best of our knowledge. 

Randomness being simulated by the universe is pointless since it would have to be computed. That really is where Occam's razor comes in. It's very unparsimonious to compute random behaviour when the simple explanation, which cannot be refuted, is that randomness is real.

<<In quantum mechanics the coin is flipped in both sides, in quantum computing qbits are both 0 and 1 at the same time.>>

That kind of explanation is just one of many attempted explanations of quantum behaviour, which consist of people trying to interpret outcomes of experiments. You could say the same thing about any binary flip-flop mechanism in that it has the *capability* to be 1 and 0.

But I don't think you can rightly say that <<<<where the particles react as waves or
particles depending on the observing status after the slit. This we know as a fact and it is
not something random>>>> bears on the discussion, particularly. That's just what is termed "quantum wave collapse" which occurs when a quantum entity is observed. "Observed" means "interacts with something".

We can ignore "superdeterminism" since it just means "determinism" and nothing more. Gryphons all the way down.

Sounds fairly contradictory to me.

Contradictory to what? Your opinions on randomness or perhaps you didn't understand what I wrote?

Randomness means there is no predictable pattern to events. "Compute random behaviour" means "simulate it". Why should the universe decide to go out and buy a very large computer from the Universal Stores and hire programmers, when randomness could just be real?

Determinism is an artificial idea, concocted by humans who imagine that the universe should work according to their say-so.

Well, on the one hand you say "to the best of our knowledge".  On the other you say it's real.  By your own admission you cannot claim it's real.

You aren't making sense, sorry. There isn't any contradiction.

We can't know anything better than to the best of our knowledge, after all. Can we.

Randomness cannot be either proven or disproven.  You can't claim " the simple explanation, which cannot be refuted, is that randomness is real."

Randomness is the state of lack of knowledge. Using the scientific method it is possible to demonstrate the impossibility of possessing certain knowledge - i.e. proving randomness exists. This is not an easy topic.

Who needs the scientific method when we have Heliocentrism?

The end all... be all... of randomness 

Randomness means that if you send a photon polarised at 45 degrees through a polariser at 90 degrees, you simply cannot in any way know whether it will go through or not. It's not that there might be some way we don't know about, it is that the possibility of knowing it is not consistent with the empirical facts.

If you wish to postulate a superdeterministic multiverse (a perfectly reasonable interpretation of QM), the thing you can't predict is which branch of the multiverse you will end up in. The result is the same - randomness to any observer.

The experiments and reasoning that lead to this conclusion are not trivial to understand, but the conclusion is robust.