Does True Randomness Actually Exist? ( ^&*#^%$&#% )

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Elroch
Bercher wrote:

elroch:"Causality means that a free choice can only affect what happens in its future light cone"

sounds a lot like an attempt at damage control, as you repeatedly stated that you dont even believe in free choices. i may read the rest later..

It's clearer to ignore the first half of that post. The "freedom" there means that the choices come from outside of the system, so they are free with regard to the system.

The formulation in terms of information seems a lot clearer to me.

Elroch
Optimissed wrote:

I would prefer to tie Elroch down into rephrasing it in English. The philosophy paradigm needs to be preferred to that of physics if the physics one is so incomprehensible. An intelligent person shouldn't have to struggle to understand this, because it isn't as if it's too intellectually challenging. It just isn't stated in a meaningfully comprehensible way.

I accept the difficulty of communicating about this. I have tried to strip it down to fundamentals and am guilty of thinking out load.

But if you think my musings are opaque try reading this sort of stuff!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_causality

Elroch

There are simple ways to describe the world and there are correct ways. Unfortunately there are no simple, correct ways.

Firstly, our world is relativistic. That means light cones are fundamental and replace the simple notion of universal time where each point separates the Universe into past and future to the relativitistic truth that each point in space-time separates all other points in space-time into a a past, a future and a region between then which is neither, with past and future being bounded by separate light cones.

So discussing causality in the real Universe requires a basic grounding in relativity and familiarity with these facts.  You will find plenty of philosophical discussions that ignore this. Some date from before Einstein, so are simply based on an out of date Galilean perspective. Others are just not keeping up.

Elroch
Optimissed wrote:


If we break down the idea of the light cone, I think we'll find that it's unnecessary.

It's not.

It also carries a strong inference, whether or not it is correct, that causality is carried by light.

It doesn't, but I can see why this could be misunderstood. The speed of light is more general than light.  It could just as easily be called the speed of gravitational waves or the speed limit on motion.

The reason it is all these thing is that it is the constant that relates the dimensions of time and distance in relativity.

What is happening is that a concept as fundamental as causality is being defined for physicists only; and also for physicists who adhere to the present day understanding of all of this. Now, the chances that is all correct are about zero, aren't they? It isn't a case of "we do the best we can with our understanding" because, that way, the correct direction may already have been lost.


The World is in a mess in many ways and it didn't get that way because throughout time, all scientists have been correct. Therefore scientists ought to take half a step backward and accept that accuracy is at least as important as the latest ideas.

Relativity is always going to remain as accurate as it is now, which is EXTRAORDINARILY accurate - a recent experiment on time dilation was precise to less than 1 part in 10^11, probably the most precise experiment ever.

(Likewise Newtonian physics is as good an approximation as ever at low energies!)

 

djuphav88

elroch:The "freedom" there means that the choices come from outside of the system, so they are free with regard to the system.

dont you think that we would be better off if you use another term all together instead of overlapping different ideas with the same term? ..if just to avoid confusion.

anyways, skimming your post it seems that youre highlighting the problem of non-locality. (althou its not clear how it relate to your "coin in a box" example)

what i dont understand at all is in what context did you post it. were you just adding to what opti already said about causation? because on its surface it doesnt even seem that you contradicted him. or maybe you were going back to our conversation about FW, and trying to answer a previous Q. or maybe you are arguing determinism all over again?

 

Elroch

Yes, I do agree with your first comment. I did say to kind of ignore the first half of that post (I only left it there to show how my thinking had gone).

My objective was to come up with a more intuitive idea of causality in a relativistic Universe.  It is normally expressed in abstract terms like:

"No information can be communicated faster than the speed of light"

Perhaps I should have left well alone!

Note that the classical equivalent of this would be "No information can be communicated to the past", which is not how most people think of classical causality, but it is a good way to express it.

djuphav88

yes, no information can be communicated to the past sounds like a necessity. 

 

djuphav88

on a totally different note..

https://youtu.be/oTbObag1r0I

djuphav88

lol

Elroch

Call that squeaky? Pah. Minnie Riperton owns squeaky.

Seriously, this singer had a uniquely amazing voice and it is tragic that she died just a few years after becoming highly regarded. She kept making live and recorded music in the last six months of her illness.

A neat thing about this song is she sings part of it in the same register as the birds in the background (actually 3 parts of it).

Elroch
Optimissed wrote:

<<No information can be communicated faster than the speed of light">>

Surely that is the subject of doubt. It seemed to have been disproved back in the 60s. In physics at school, we were taught how and why it seemed to have been discredited.

No. It is one of the rock solid principles of modern physics, simply referred to as "causality". I would guess you were exposed to a misrepresentation of the implications of entanglement, but perhaps you can clarify it by being more specific.

Thee_Ghostess_Lola

neat ??...ohhh kaaayyy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrip_QVuWWQ

Elroch

grin.png

Elroch
Optimissed wrote:
Elroch wrote:
Optimissed wrote:

<<No information can be communicated faster than the speed of light">>

Surely that is the subject of doubt. It seemed to have been disproved back in the 60s. In physics at school, we were taught how and why it seemed to have been discredited.

No. It is one of the rock solid principles of modern physics, simply referred to as "causality". I would guess you were exposed to a misrepresentation of the implications of entanglement, but perhaps you can clarify it by being more specific.

Difficult to answer. I'm aware there are interpretations of entanglement that do that but I don't think it's that. Most sensible people don't believe time travel is possible, except in a forward direction and I'm one of them. If information is restricted to being transmitted forward in time then that becomes irrelevant to a definition of causality, because it's how things are, so in effect it ducks the issue and it's no more than a pretence of a definition. It's necessary to have a definition that is applicable even if causality can go backwards.

Causality is the fact that information only moves one way. We call that way forwards in time, and the region it can reach from some point in space time "the future" of that point.

Time travel being impossible is a simple corollary of this, since sending anything back in time carries information (eg one bit of information to say whether it did or did not go to the destination).

Note that a more important corollary that works in both paradigms is that information can only arrive from the past (with "the past" having a different technical meaning in each case, like "the future").

 

Elroch

It's how causality is defined. Don't complain to me!

My guess is that you couldn't describe in a meaningful way that is means to be "meaningful within the philosophy paradigm".  Physics has replaced part of what used to be philosophy and finds its meaning through the much clearer scientific method. (If Aristotle had realised this, some wrong physics could have been discarded from his philosophy).

Elroch

It's a simple challenge. If you can't even communicate what "meaningful within the philosophy paradigm" amounts to in the way I can explain what a meaningful statement in any scientific context is, then it is not substantial.

djuphav88

it seem like you two dont agree on the meaning of causality, so obviously you wont agree on a definition either (similar to FW definitions). for example, a probabilistic causality will have a very different meaning from a deterministic one.

so maybe a more meaningful way to go about it, would be to highlight the differences of how you two perceive causality first. then defining it should be quite ez.

djuphav88

probably should waited till friday, but hey..

https://youtu.be/UXs1mMnVr3Y

djuphav88

i've been blamed for liking those before. yes..

djuphav88

muchas gracias!