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

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

Impossible: “Anything that breaks the laws of physics”

Theory by Nobel Physics Professor on possibility of perpetual motion.

Conservation of Energy...

I don't doubt your seriousness. But I am still waiting to see a post of yours indicating your proclamation assuming superior knowledge and understanding of this subject. You have also managed to completely ignore the answering of the question last century, set on its way by the thought experiment known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox (in truth it is not a paradox, merely counterintuitive).

Einstein's stated idea was that the randomness intrinsic to quantum mechanics might just be apparent.  He believed physics should be deterministic. He mused that QM could be explained if there were "local hidden variables" - quantities we don't know of which are compatible with physics as we know it - whose variation causes the apparent randomness (a bit like a program we can't see can generate pseudorandom numbers that may look random).  The "local" nature of the variables is key, because without this, these variables would break causality and allow faster than light communication.

Building on this, Bell's theorem says that measurements in a certain class of deterministic causal system would have to obey Bell's inequality, while quantum mechanics predicts that examples of this system violate Bell's inequality. So checking Bell's inequality in real experiments like this is key.

Bell's experiments have all shown that Bell's inequality is broken by a large margin, confirming quantum mechanics and disproving "local realism" (which has no randomness).

Thus, the assumption of causality alone implies there is no deterministic explanation of quantum mechanical phenomena or, to put it another way, there is true randomness in quantum behaviour.

The EPR Paradox

Bell's Theorem

Bell's Test Experiments (including 2015 loophole-free experiment)

A problem is that this stuff is hard to understand. Like many topics, the majority of people who don't understand it (which is perfectly normal) can either accept that the global community of scientists know what they are doing or they can retreat into denial to a state of knowledge before the early 20th century.

@elroch, I appologzie if my opening post appear convoluted to you.
however, since your idea of true randomness largely contrast mine, I must ask you to align with the topic.
thank you in advance for your corporation and contribution.

roasted...burst ! thats wutchu get4tryn2hijack the thread !

I'm sorry you got an impression of "deliberately sowing chaos and confusion". Clearly the only thing that was incorrect about that impression was the "deliberately" part: in truth the reason for me putting things in different words was to attempt to throw light on the concept, for anyone who was puzzled.

In that spirit here are some thoughts that motivated my definition of "true randomness".  I am genuinely hoping this will increase understanding, not confuse! (Hint: I often find reading slowly makes technical things a lot clearer!)

1. Randomness is a standard concept and refers to uncertainty in predicting something.
2. As such the word "random" refers not only to some event which can have different outcomes but also, implicitly, to some specific viewpoint (where the predicting is being done from). 
   
   An illustrative example of why that matters comes from the game of holdem poker. The outcome of interest is how good your final hand will be. Before the cards are dealt, your final hand is very random indeed. You get dealt two cards, which leaves your final hand still rather random, but less so than it was before you saw any. When the flop goes down and as the turn card is seen, the uncertainty is reduced further and finally comes disappears altogether when the river card is visible and you know what hand you have. So the viewpoint (in time) affects how random the final event is.
3. In physics there are events that happen that are very random from any point of view until after they have happened. One type of example is nuclear decays that cause radioactivity.
   
   While other types of event may seem to be random, they might be caused by something that has previously happened. For example, whether the Earth gets hit by an asteroid is random in some sense but, if you can track asteroids, the uncertainty is reduced and disappears altogether before a collision occurs. Thus you can think of the initial path of the asteroid as random and the collision a result that becomes increasingly less random until it is certain to either hit or miss.

So that's why I suggested the term "truly random" might refer to something that was unpredictable from any viewpoint except those in its future (when it is not random, because it has happened).

I think you have not even as much as glanced at it being influenced by Elrochs definitions of MY statement. The idea is evidence of “time crystals”, independent of matter that exist in all time. Really fascinating stuff. The guy is recognized as the leading Physicist in his field. The basic particles are NAMED after his 1st theorizing them and subsequent discovery. 

If the time crystals proved to exist, they’d be behaving exactly in the manner of a perpetual motion machine. It’s possible as the machine is not dependent on matter/energy - the Physical Laws. 

So in this sense the time crystals qualify as “theoretical possibility of perpetual motion”.  The time crystals are no different than matter when describing “machine”

Searching .... searching for a cause. Ah  ... here one is. Wonder if something else may have attributed? Ah  .... there it is. Can’t seem to find any causes for this over here though. We ‘ll just have to call it random and go about normal business. 

While fascinating, physicists agree time crystals are not perpetual motion devices, simply because they don't meet the definition. As Wikipedia paraphrases from reference texts: "A perpetual motion machine is a hypothetical machine that can do work indefinitely without an energy source. This kind of machine is impossible, as it would violate the first or second law of thermodynamics."

As an article on time crystals says:

"Does this mean we have a perpetual-motion device? Well, kinda, and also kinda not. Since physical time crystals are not in equilibrium, they do require a driving mechanism to keep them happy. Turn off the laser, for example, and the time crystal falls asleep. Also, they are in their ground state, which means we can't pull any energy out of them."

So that's a NOT, rather than any "kinda"!  To get any energy out we need to put more energy in (from the laser).

While the Sun is for human purposes a perpetual source of energy, it too fails to meet the definition of perpetual motion since it will run down eventually.

Note:  the Earth perpetually orbiting the Sun according to Newtonian gravity would not qualify as perpetual motion because even though it would orbit forever, there is only a finite amount of energy available if this motion were harnessed. [Interestingly but irrelevant to perpetual motion, general relativity implies that no orbit lasts forever even in a vacuum - gravitational radiation causes all orbits to very slowly decay, but that is a completely unconnected matter].

It's worth noting that the discussion of a form of randomness in physics that definitely cannot ever go away is an answer to the point you made in your opening post when you said:

"4. Randomness is a reflection of our ignorance about the thing being observed
rather than something inherent to it."

It is this hypothesis which is not true for the quantum systems considered. The randomness is definitely inherent rather than being just a matter of us not being aware of some hidden information. Your thinking has a long pedigree: it is close to what Einstein hypothesised, but which was eventually proven wrong.

Ukee, hes just jealous that u have the bestest thread on Mister Chess Dot Com. lol !!

While the Sun is for human purposes

thx for this admission...yee !

The revelations within the topic can take you deep as chess, that was a surprise to me.

My nirvana can be found with simplicity, and quietness. 

The vibration of your own psyche should be listened to carefully ongoing basis.

Philosophers and poet's are allowed to stare off into the haze.. I like that. 

I accept that I have expressed that in a way that is uncommon.

However, one nice intuitive way of looking at it is to follow those who created the theory of probability in order to settle a dispute about gambling. The mathematical theory turned out to be the right one for quantifying all randomness once it had been sufficiently generalised.

While you can only make a profit on betting on rolling a 6 with a fair six-sided die if you are given better than 5:1 odds, after the die has been rolled you can confidently bet on what the outcome was at any odds because you know what it is (perhaps with someone who has not seen the die, so assesses the odds differently). 

This is quantitatively the same as betting on some future event that is certain because there is no randomness in either case.

"A random event is random after it happened because it's part of a random sequence."

True randomness need to be identified by its source. and thats the pink box that you dont like to talk about : )

personally ? i feel s/o needsa couple days in the bunker...or quarantined. i mean call it w/e but it'll probly do em some good.

opti, i wouldnt waste my time. not until he show understanding of the topic as intended. iow.. he takes you for a needles mind ride to nowhere.

Everything is affected by something else.

Note the verb affect was used and not the noun effect. 
Thinking events occur independently of each other, that perhaps between 1 and a 100 causes are responsible- or even more nonsensical that none exist,  is just so much fodder. Witness the previous pages with all it’s wonderful repetitive disagreement over just what is randomness. 
No worries though as it doesn’t exist. 
Not to fret or need to get huffed about as neither does determinism.

Neither abstract concept describes the real world - which is a ordered Cosmos. Independent origination works far better to describe observations. No need for all this speculation about whether causes exist or which events can be predicted with accuracy. 
Finally, the question is purely philosophical by nature. The joker who interjects physics into every discussion, insisting on our education, is trolling and of a controlling nature. His hijacking the thread with spammed “physics” has turned me off.

https://www.ias.edu/ideas/searching-randomness

Although the concept of randomness is ubiquitous, it turns out to be difficult to generate a truly random sequence of events. The need for "pseudorandomness" in various parts of modern science, ranging from numerical simulation to cryptography, has challenged our limited understanding of this issue and our mathematical resources. In this talk, Professor Jean Bourgainexplores some of the problems of pseudorandomness and tools to address them.

Note: The topic is far encompassing. This being a mathematical approach randomness can be seen from any number of perspectives.

Quite impossible but still they try. A summit is broached thinking it’s the top of the world.