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

As Copi and Cohen point out, the fallacy is only there "when the appeal is made to parties having no legitimate claim to authority in the matter at hand".  For example, Prof. Valerio Scarani is an authority on randomness (as well as being a quantum physicist and well-regarded author with a specialist interest, he has taught an excellent course on this subject).

As another example it is not fallacious to accept the Big Bang Theory (i.e. that the Universe we see has arisen from the expansion of a very small, very hot, very uniform region) based on the fact that virtually every person working in the field of cosmology accepts this. Strongly believing otherwise based on say, a tiny fraction of peer-reviewed research that is generally not accepted or (worse) independent, untested feelings that have not passed peer review would be reckless.

(It would be far more reasonable to merely entertain the possibility that there is some bizarre explanation of the appearance of a Big Bang, while accepting that the standard explanation is likely correct. Belief is not a boolean phenomenon, which is why Bayesian probability theory exists).

this comment alone tells me that you never even understood the topic. stop. maybe if valerio scarani was here he could explain it to you in a way that you understand. unfortunately hes not.

Have you any knowledge of quantum mechanics? I ask because that is a vague claim that makes no sense. Also note that you have just learnt of the existence of Scarani from me, while I have plenty of experience of what he has said in person as well as in his book on quantum mechanics.

By contrast, since you chose to take a misguided trollish potshot, as well as getting the best results I am aware of on Scarani's course, I studied quantum mechanics as part of getting a first in maths from Cambridge and have studied it since then out of interest (I particularly like Paul Dirac's work on relativistic quantum mechanics, which led to quantum field theory).

There is no doubt that Scarani would agree (as would any competent physicist that the prediction of even such a thing as the future motion of one (small) object is fundamentally impossible because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (which itself is a result of unbreakable theorems in Fourier Theory).

The real world consists entirely of quantum objects. Not only does this mean that their behaviour has randomness that has no known way of being removed (from Heisenberg), but the verification of the violation of Bell's inequality in experiments shows that this randomness cannot be removed without a violation of causality. Causality is one of the the most fundamental (some would say the most fundamental) known principles about how the real world behaves.

Causation does not "exist" , but the events denoted by the term causation do occur, e.g water does boil when heated, acorns grow to Oaks. Causation only " exists" as a part of the grammar of language, as a useful linguistic convention and convenience.

Causation and randomness are abstract ideas, a minds construct to help make sense of it. Neither one exists but in the realm of the mind. 

Good posts, guys! I hope that won't put you off.

To be frank, I feel a discussion about causality would have the potential to be a lot more productive than some of this one!

The meaning and nature of causality seems subtle to me. Much of the fundamental physics that governs our world is believed to be perfectly time reversible (gravity, electromagnetism and classical quantum mechanics - with the exception of dealing with the collapse of the wave function).  But the real world that is almost all governed by those time-symmetric laws is extremely non-time symmetric. No plant ever shone yellow light towards the Sun, resulting in a cascade of photons into its centre that eventually breaks apart a helium nucleus and produces protons. The reverse process occurs all the time.

Hawking dealt with 3 independent arrows of time in his most popular book. The arrow of entropy seems the most important (and in a way the most elusive). An odd way to put it is that if you divide up the possible (micro)states of a system into a big and a small subset, you are more likely to end up in the big one.

@MustangMate is right that both causation and randomness are abstractions. Not real world entities but aspects of the behaviour of those entities. He describes good examples of real world causation. Implicitly these examples rely on the notion that we can have two scenarios, one where some cause exists and another where it does not and compare the outcomes.  We know that acorns "cause" oaks, because of looking at examples where acorns turn into oaks (to be precise, a lack of acorns always results in a lack of oaks - we wouldn't claim every acorn leads to an oak).

quite true... the cause and the effect are one.

now...he is henery the cat he is

henery the cat he is - he is

he got pregnant little tabby next door

shes had babies 7x's before

& every one wuzza henery

she wouldnt date a willie or a chris

hes her 8th old tom hes henery

Henery the Cat...he is !

Projecting your unconstructive mindset on to me is revealing. I think quite differently, being naturally motivated by the pleasure of understanding and the wish to share that. Again, I can see how this notion might genuinely not occur to you.

hopefully it won’t have to be spelled out in black and white.

ah Goddess!

i tried Hennery, but some people might have mistook me for farm fowl. would you be interested in going to the cinema some night ? i promise i am a reformed king.

it make a lot of sense, but lets cut right to the chase. you keep changing your story in effort to fit the data into your belief system or whatever, and its tiring to follow.
for example.. i have no idea where you stand on interpretations anymore. first you were a fan, happily claimed that TR and MW coexist. but then you learned that it was absurd to do so. now you seem to pretend it never happened and you reject all other interpretations? just like opti predicted. lol
but this doesn't work either. because it equal to saying that your interpretation is superior and absolute and all others are obsolete? and claim to be objective? how does that work?
you see.. opti and lola have the luxury to reject whatever they want because they dont pretend to be objective. but if you claim both objectivity and cherry picking at the same time.. kindof having the cake and eating it too, isnt it?

as for valerio.. i only glanced at one of his articles. but it doesn't change anything. you make him sound like your guru or something. its understood to everyone that his conclusions are his subjective interpretation and philosophy, not some sort of the absolute truth you believe it to be. laters..

wait.. nobody is after you. its all just cause and effect of your behavior.

these graphics made my yesterday : )

 i promise i am a reformed king.

i can change that

Ah, yes, well, there's a lot of self-awareness going on in this thread. Elroch seems to be the only one trying not to get personal. 

that one guy never seemed2like2go2certain places...like where science can do as much damage as good. which izza alotta places !

and anyone who says...

there was no time before the big bang. We have finally found something that does not have a cause because there was no time for a cause to exist in.

bzzzt...we hava answer alex for effect w/outta cause - yay !  

or better...

"The universe itself, in all its mind-boggling vastness and complexity, could simply have popped into existence without violating the known laws of nature,"

gotcha. totally u/s the how and why part now...thx ! 

or howbout this one...

there is nothing south of the south pole so there was nothing around before the big bang.

riiiiiihgt  . relieved to know there wuz someone around to know all this back then. whew !

what i luv about science is how anything that doesn’t make sense can be classed as random, and suddenly its solved!

science is pure magic.