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Random???


kenshin

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Can we call the outcome of a chaotic phenomena like for example evolution or weather to be random? Isn't such an outcome just unpredictable due to inherent nature of numbers and other not so precisely defined factors but not random?

 

Is it right to say that the unpredictably arising in chaotic system is just unpredictability while the unpredictability which is a property of quantum system is actual randomness?

 

Please discuss.

Thanks!

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well I for one am not a Believer in pure "Random"

 

I think the situations that we Call "random" are just Predictable systems that we don`t understand due to the complexity and number of factors involved.

and of course the limitations set that by observing these factors to plug into a model, will itself alter the outcome.

that again will have an entirely New set of outcomes, but again that could be modeled too and be made predictable eventually I feel.

 

this is just my Opinion however.

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I think, even with something as seemingly random as the weather, that if you were to know *every* factor that went into a certain pattern and recreated them *exactly* you would get the exact same pattern. That's not random.

 

Just because we can't know or recreate all the factors in evolution or the weather doesn't mean they are random phenomena.

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I like this question but I think its proper definition hangs in larger issues not to currently discussed or really dissected. For instance time, relativity would have time as something real, at least that’s what I get from reading it. Time is also invoked in other aspects of physical equations for instance. So if time is real, as in a real physical phenomena I think that comes to bear on what you call random.

 

For instance, if time is a real thing, such as the arrow or time or entropy what is that saying? Time is work? What does time being real hold for implications on organic evolution? Is it another variable that would lump into natural selection if so? So I think really a proper definition of time needs to be accounted for before chaos can be solved, but I don’t think its the only thing that needs to be solved for.

 

Energy wise humans can only produce to such a level, and for the rest we are stuck doing observations on entities like an AGN. We have to use the current in a temporal sense to try to deduce the past from what we can gather. I mean is the big bang, what if millions of particle types where coming about in say just a pocket at some point existing for almost unimaginable short periods of time?

 

One thing I do know is that snowflakes I think are a fine example of such, or natural reality. A mountain range might have a common “phenotype” for example, but the mountain itself is hardly ordered as say a diamond is. I think this is why cross studies in different fields could become such a gem. What is the difference of say studying time in relation to physics to say studying time in relation to geology?

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Is it right to say that the unpredictably arising in chaotic system is just unpredictability while the unpredictability which is a property of quantum system is actual randomness?

I tend to agree, but problems arise when you take this thought one step further:

- Assume the unpredictability comes from arbitrary small uncertainties in the initial conditions when given sufficient time (that's actually pretty close to the premise of at least non-qm chaos theory, I think).

- Then, given at some scale you have qm behaviour and assuming something similar like a measurement process happens at some intermediate scale, you inherit the qm randomness into your system, hence making it random, too.

- ... and somehow I wrote this oven an hour ago, just got back to my still-running computer and dunno what exactly wanted to say next. Had something to do with that QM is completely non-random except for the measurement process and that the question where the observer is arises.

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No, not at all. "Where" was rather meant as "where within the causal chain from the bouncing of two nitrogen molecules to the stormy weather next weekend", i.e. not in the sense of spacetime-coordinates. I am not sure to what extent the question makes sense, though.

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Quantum theory teaches us that uncertainty and possibilities are the rulers of the world. But personally I believe that there is something beyond this, that we can't understand, just like YT said.

 

"God doesn't throw dice" A.Einstein - i truly believe on that

 

We may throw the dice, but the Lord determines how they fall. --Proverbs 16:33 (New Living Translation)

 

Look, look! God does play dice! >:D:D

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What's going on....i am all confused:confused: , what i am trying to ask is,can we call the unpredictability arising out of the error in measurement caused due to the limitation of not knowing the exact value of an irrational number be considered randomness?

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I see this as a matter of definition, but for me the word random is an idealisation used to treat cases with missing discriminating information to prefer one option over the other.

 

If we can't predict something, by calling it random and then assuming it has a fixed probability distribution. But how do we know the probability distribution? Record infinite amount of data and use the time series to calculate the relative frequency?

 

What prevents the actual recorded sequence to be taken as the exact pattern?

 

Of course the point is howto predict the data before it happens, right? But then, before we have seen the data, how do we identify the probability distribution? How do we know that the relative frequency will be the same for each large sub sequence?

 

The concept of randomness is IMO a kind of idealisation, and therefor to ask if somthing is "truly random" or just "apparently random" is unclear to me unless someone can identify a strategy for measuring randomness. But given that, if this measurement takes infite time, then it means we will never find out in finite time? And even if we did, we would probably run out of memory before that.

 

I think there is a domain where true random and just unpredicable is fundamentally indistinguishable, the difference is in some idealisation that doesn't make full contact with measurments.

 

/Fredrik

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