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

Sort:
Phylo-Beddo
MustangMate wrote:

Heisenbergs uncertainty principle has nothing to say about true randomness. Not being able to measure velocity and position is a function of Time. Time is not singular points but rather as a blanket, making any such observation impossible. Such uncertainty does not suggest  randomness exists. 

Heisenberg knew he couldn’t be too sure about anything.

MustangMate

The idea that uncertainty increases with time is false. It is based on the assumption that randomness exists. With greater time it’s concluded a greater chance for uncertainty to appear. In the real world, events are happening as they be and are not influenced by any future time frame. 
The principle is purely mathematical. Adding any desired variable makes for wonderful conclusions. Truth is, any value for uncertainty is a constant and any given point in time. 

Elroch

Einstein famously guessed similarly, expressed in his famous utterance "God doesn't gamble" (usually loosely translated as "play dice") by which he meant that he thought the Universe was deterministic. Quantum mechanics implied the Univere was not deterministic, and that there was randomness, so he wished to prove it wrong. But he didn't just guess, he and Podolsky and Rosen came up with a way to prove it wrong, the so-called EPR paradox, about a weird prediction referred to as "spooky action at a distance". Later John Bell made this more precise by finding how to check the property quantitatively, and eventually it was possible to do experiments, starting with Alain Aspect in the 1970s.

The result has been that all the experiments confirm quantum mechanics, specifically the violation of Bell's inequality, the existence of "spooky action at a distance" and the consequent existence of a kind of irreducible randomness in behaviour that can never be removed by any improved information.

I am sorry if anyone is deeply offended by me knowing this part of the history of physics - i.e. our knowledge of how the world behaves - and maybe is particularly offended by the fact that it answered the question posed in this forum's title, finally, in the last century, before it was asked here (though the experiments get better and better over time, closing more of what are called "loopholes", that are ways very unlikely hidden behaviour could invalidate the results). Anyone who feels like that about me passing on the facts might do well to study the history themselves and try to understand it. If they do, they should come to the same conclusions. Google should lead you to a wealth of information. Indeed, this would be a better way to learn about it.

Elroch

@Optimissed's contributions led me to an improved, simplified definition of the most extreme randomness that exists in our Universe:

A truly random event is one that is unpredictable from all points in space-time not in the future of the event.

KingAxelson

Fine, everybody has their own definition of randomness. Great work people, that's thinking. Now let's see you, all of you give simple real life examples of your definition(s). I'll start by restating what I said before.. There are human examples of randomness, and the non human examples of randomness. (Right or wrong put em out there) Two non human examples to start..

Leaves from a tree falling to the ground.

Snowflakes falling to the ground.

Right or wrong they both seem quite random to me. Real world simple examples seem to be avoided here. I wonder what a psychologist would say about that. 

Elroch

To a physicist, observing whether a photon is vertically polarised is simpler! It can be analysed in full detail in a brief paper. By contrast modelling the randomness in the atmosphere and the structure of a snowflake is enormously complicated. You need to somehow separate the predictable part of its behaviour from the unpredictable part.

The varied structure of snowflakes is the subject of a surprisingly large amount of research. For example, there is a book of over 500 pages just on the physics of snowflakes, by the subject's most devoted researcher: 

Snow Crystals - Kenneth G. Libbrecht

 

KingAxelson

Yeah, I figured it wasn't as simple as that. Meaning the given wind currents at said time. Are we to assume that wind currents are also orcastrated? If so, then the decent is not random.?

(Nice PDF by the way. Nothing like some light reading.)

Thee_Ghostess_Lola

Heisenbergs uncertainty principle has nothing to say about true randomness.

no. but theres some copenhagen deduction going on there...they say.

Thee_Ghostess_Lola

Making claim ”Science” can provide us with the single correct evaluation sounds like a Guru from days old. 

now i wanna canada dry ginger ale

Thee_Ghostess_Lola

there is no room in his skull for humility.

i hava idea. lets blow it up !!

4c0325e4fe7761c753dc3dea8c9a0c08.jpg

Phylo-Beddo

was the Big Bang a truly random event ?

Sillver1

so can i finally say that we are clueless if TR exist without getting trolled? : )

but seriously.. im curious.. did you misunderstand the topic as intended by the OP,  or were you aware?

Elroch

Regarding a few posts relating to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle:

As Valerio Scarani points out (and this is the standard definition) randomness is the degree of unpredictability of some event from some chosen viewpoint.

The reason Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle implies randomness is that it implies you can't know everything you need to to predict the future motion even of a single particle with nothing influencing it.

To be more specific, to do this you would need to know its position and velocity at the start time, and the more accurately you know one of those, the less accurately you know the other.

Phylo-Beddo
Sillver1 wrote:

so can i finally say that we are clueless if TR exist without getting trolled? : )

but seriously.. im curious.. did you misunderstand the topic as intended by the OP,  or were you aware?

sir, what seems to be your boggle ?

Sillver1

addressing me with 'sir' makes me feel old.. lol

elroch should understand my boggle, and it would be useful if he explain it to everyone and bring end to the confusion. its really very simple.

Phylo-Beddo

ah but elroch understands everything!

(in his own cute way).

MustangMate

What makes for the truly laughable is attaching the notion the BB was a random event. Is bad enough to believe in such arcane ideas, but then in an attempt to validate is existence, my intelligence gets insulted ! Perhaps being such a random event this leads to the absurdity of multiverses, Gadzillions if them all randomly popping into existence! Its all happing by random chance, so say the Indisputable Gurus 

Thee_Ghostess_Lola

i cant believe it wuz yesterday

MustangMate

Elroch is trying to bamboozle is with basic physics implying somehow the uncertainty principle is relative to randomness. Science IS able to measure both speed and location very accurately- just not at the same Time. This is a function of time and unrelated to whether or not events occurred randomly. 

Phylo-Beddo

so the Big Bang was designed ?

very interesting.

proof ?

before we all start laughing our heads off.