Can randomness be caused by something?

[Professor Plum]

'Randomness' cannot come from nothing.

Something must exist for it to exist (a rolling rock or even a tumbleweed)

Therefore, it must, at some point in time, have been borne from an order of sorts.


Without 'randomness' there cannot be 'order' and visa versa.

[Nitsche X]

Hey, when you think about the concept of randomness, how do you think it operates? Like Quantum Physics is said to be random, but where does it come from?

Right now, I have 2 workable concepts of randomness:

1. Caused by absolutely nothing (just came into existence)

2. Caused by something (Like a computer that may randomly choose between A or B. The decision came from the computer)

I am kind of having some difficulty with this second concept.What you think about this?

[Nitsche X]

randomness is only a word representing what we tend to see in the outer world :
in fact we tend to impose the generated idea of randomness onto the outer world :
but it is really an element of the psyche which is random due to lack of knowledge within the mind of all the factors operating in the conditions we are viewing, and these conditions include what we know of the observing mind at that given obsservation:
thus we term the lack of inner and outer unknown factors as randomness :
from this point of understanding we have a sudden stability within the randomness :
this point of understanding is one of the factors lacking within the minds of many observers, and so randomness is used to describe the observed conditions, when in reality it descibes the lack of understanding in the observer's mind :
what appears to be random to the observer is really a reflection of the point at which the observer is on the evolutionary scale :
remember - the observer does not reflect the universe - the universe relects the observer :
when the observer looks into the universe he sees what he knows and what he doesn't know :
what he doesn't know is where the randomness lies :

[wanabe]

Ah, but in the example where the rock rolls down the hill, it is caused by something else that is random.

How so?

Something that is unconscious, that doesn't choose, has no choice. It is a prop, not an actor.

It is possible to eliminate this unconscious randomness and only include conscious randomness (When randomness is caused by something, it can only be conscious), but that seems sort of empty.

How is it possible to eliminate unconscious randomness?

[Ambertider]

Well put.

randomness is only a word representing what we tend to see in the outer world :
in fact we tend to impose the generated idea of randomness onto the outer world :
but it is really an element of the psyche which is random due to lack of knowledge within the mind of all the factors operating in the conditions we are viewing, and these conditions include what we know of the observing mind at that given obsservation:
thus we term the lack of inner and outer unknown factors as randomness

[NameRemoved]

'Randomness' cannot come from nothing.

Something must exist for it to exist (a rolling rock or even a tumbleweed)

Therefore, it must, at some point in time, have been borne from an order of sorts.


Without 'randomness' there cannot be 'order' and visa versa.

I agree which is what I said in my post #2 here Professor Plum [oh and Miss Scarlet did it ]

[Hello]

Ah, but in the example where the rock rolls down the hill, it is caused by something else that is random.

How so?

Something that is unconscious, that doesn't choose, has no choice. It is a prop, not an actor.

It is possible to eliminate this unconscious randomness and only include conscious randomness (When randomness is caused by something, it can only be conscious), but that seems sort of empty.

How is it possible to eliminate unconscious randomness?

Didn't you say that the rock rolling down the hill was caused by somethingelse? Whether that thing was random or caused itself, the event that it caused was not random at all. I thought that you said that it was random because its cause was random. If not, I don't get what you mean then.

When I say that it is possible to eliminate unconscious randomness, I am saying that even if a concept of unconscious choices isn't found, we can still say that there is randomness by something, but that something can only be conscious.

[Nitsche X]

Randomness -

reply to Ambertider...........

Ambertide you are right about the random APPEARANCE which minuscule and mega events give us.
You are right to a point.
Your key word is APPEARANCE.
Relate this word back to the observing mind.
When the mind reaches the point where it lacks understanding of the parts of what it observes, then it symbolises this in-comprehension with words like Appearance, RANDOMNESS, and so on.
And so the argument rages.
But in order to solve the issue of RANDOMNESS, we must begin at this point of in-comprehension.
Incomprehension is a huge factor in randomness.

Start from here.

And by the way Ambertide....

If we have a choice of alternatives, and we choose left instead of right in our actions, then we have entered a different set of consequences, or in other words, a completely different universe, with further consequences.
Each thought we have brings us into a diffierent universe, as opposed to one which we would have entered if we had thought something differently at that moment.

Thought is the domain of randomness. Not the outer physical universe.

[Algol]

1. Caused by absolutely nothing (just came into existence.

As to Randomness:

Rather then came into existence, why not state that it has always been ad infinitum?

Don't think you can logically deduce what happens by chance.

Or maybe it's like the I Ching, which states that every occurence, whether it be something as mundane as leaves falling from trees and landing in certain spots, happens exactly as it should. (That, I believe would be Einstien's thoughts on the matter; a determinist view point)

[Haller]

Let us get one thing straight my friends... quantum mechanics leans more toward the probability side of things and not toward complete random chaos...

quite complicated and unfathomable if you ask me...

[Ambertider]

And by the way Ambertide....

If we have a choice of alternatives, and we choose left instead of right in our actions, then we have entered a different set of consequences, or in other words, a completely different universe, with further consequences.
Each thought we have brings us into a diffierent universe, as opposed to one which we would have entered if we had thought something differently at that moment.

Thought is the domain of randomness. Not the outer physical universe.

Let's call it our perception rather than our thought - wherein our apprehension and field of choices lie. But there are no choices really. I am into destiny. The cosmos is an extremely tight operation with not one atom's width of slack in it anywhere, and that is as much as in what one thinks as anything else. Most of the cosmos is not physical, and what we see of it that is physical is only one possible spectrum of physicality... I don't mean only one spectrum of the physical spectrum we know, but only one spectrum of physicality. Its downright incredible.

Thought is normally the reflector of perceptions only. It can be perception itself; which we call insight or intuition, but that's the exception and not the rule. So when we perceive something as random its not the result of thought - perhaps its the result of perception itself or a side effect of it. We perceive in many ways and we only consider what is happening in our perceptions as far as they are upheld by language. For instance, we can say to another that we are being assailed by random scents as we move through a garden, but we cannot share the information with the other person using olfactory communication, because OC doesn't exist for us. Our nostrils perceive the randomness then thought translates the experience into speech. The person receiving the information can be sure I have thought and speech but not a sense of smell. Therefore the alleged randomness for him can only really exist in my thoughts if for some strange reason he also thinks I have no sense of smell and am just guessing there are differing scents about.

Perception is not an internal and isolated thing such as thought is. Thought... ordinary human thought anyway, can reflect anything it wants about randomness. In doing so it can even give the appearance of reproducing it, but all its really doing is showing off. Bear in mind that 'having random thoughts' may be a different matter altogether - to do with thought shutting on and off.

Perception is an exchange with the environs. So I feel the mystery of randomness is in the exchange of energy between ourselves and the environs, which I myself consider to be wholly and infinitely composed of living things, within and without.

Surely, we are nowhere.

[Hello]

1. Caused by absolutely nothing (just came into existence.

As to Randomness:

Rather then came into existence, why not state that it has always been ad infinitum?

Don't think you can logically deduce what happens by chance.

Or maybe it's like the I Ching, which states that every occurence, whether it be something as mundane as leaves falling from trees and landing in certain spots, happens exactly as it should. (That, I believe would be Einstien's thoughts on the matter; a determinist view point)

I don't think that the fact that something always existed isn't really random at all. And even if I myself believe in some sort of block timeline (which I do), there is still a mystery as to how it came to be, though that is not really my point in this thread.

[wanabe]

To the member named "Hello"

I said the rock rolling down hill COULD be caused by something else.

The following is what I said originally:
"The word that can be given for unconscious choices in the way I think you mean it (ex: A rock rolling down a hill) is random." I was giving an example of how I think you mean random. At the same time I am telling you that the word given for "choices" made by unconscious things is random.

What is random though, is it the unexpected end product of actions? or how and when it arrives at that end. It's a question of do the ends justify the means in a way.

ex: A plane will crash into the white house. We don't know when, nor the type of plane. Could be a paper air plane, and it happened right after I said that.

For something to be ordered we must know every detail not just the end result, for something to be random it must be unexpected and or perhaps unlikely to occur.

For a thing to be random it has partly to do with our knowledge but simply knowing that something will happen is not enough to say there is order. We must know how, when, why, details before we can say there is order to something. If we do not know the order of everything, than there will always be random, how ever minuscule it may be.

Hello-"When I say that it is possible to eliminate unconscious randomness, I am saying that even if a concept of unconscious choices isn't found, we can still say that there is randomness by something, but that something can only be conscious."

Where does one draw the line for conscious, perhaps many more things are conscious than one considers...I believe that before life there was a calculable order to the universe, with the presence of life; acting with some degree of independence the ability to accurately calculate something definitely was eradicated...So in a sense I agree with your above quote, but the "only" part is where I have trouble.

[Hello]

Wanabe, do you define randomness as the unpedictability of events that we see in nature? If so, then we are talking about two entirely different versions of randomness.

What I am talking about is the concept of true objective randomness, which unfortunately wasn't discussed among many of the responses.

[Haller]

Chaos or probablity.