Is a concept of randomness just another name for our ignorance, or lack of our knowledge?
When you throw a pair of dice on a table, for example, you usually think of the outcome as random, but it must have been determined by a complex chain reaction of causes and effects, so it is not so much a random outcome, as you are simply not aware of all of the factors that play into it (the position of the dice in your hand, the force with which you throw them, how they bounce off of each other and the table, at what angle and momentum they do so, the humidity in the air, what you ate for breakfast, etcetera, etcetera.) – you cannot see how it all plays out, so you call it random. But nothing is random because something must have been caused by something else, which in turn, has been caused by something else. It is not actually random.
So, if everything must have a cause and effect then everything that happens is just a complex interaction between causes and effects. That’s it. Like a pre-made movie that is just playing itself out. And all of the occurrences, from the beginning of the universe to its very end are already determined. The future has already been determined and if you had a super computer that could factor in and calculate all of the causes and effects, and be able to keep up with an increasing complexity of these chains, on a physical/molecular/thermodynamic or whatnot level (which would probably be expressed by a monstrous mathematical formula), then theoretically, it could predict the future. All that it is lacking is information happening at the present time. The complexity is mind-boggling, but if you had all of the pieces of information and knew how they play out between each other in different combinations and degrees, then you would also know the future.
To question one of your underlying assumptions here: why do you assume that randomness and cause-and-effect are exclusive of each other? Why cannot they both exist?
For example, clearly the dice roll is random to us. We have no idea, and can have no idea, which side appears on top after a good shake and throw. We could model the dice rolls over time and they would still be random. Yet of course, as you point out, they are the result of cause and effect. Is this a paradox? No. It simply means that randomness is random from a perspective. There is nothing such as “absolute randomness”, just as there is nothing such as “absolute cause and effect”, because unknowns and indeterminants always factor into every action. Possibility itself exists, which represents the presence of unknowns and indeterminants on other levels. These levels combine to create real possibility, possibility for difference.
Randomness and cause-and-effect are not at odds with each other, one does not exclude the other - we just need to learn to see them as conditionals, and strip ourselves of the absolutist black-and-white interpretations of them. Perspective is everything here - everything begins and ends with perspective. An event can be both random and determined at the same time. In fact, for randomness to even mean anything implies the existence of cause-and-effect as the framework within which the random event takes place. Likewise with cause and effect, it implies the necessary existence of so-called randomness.
As far as I know, there is no cause known behind nuclear decay, but that’s the only random process in nature. And even that is not random at the scale of a large statistical sample over time.
Who was it that said we would have to know the position, speed, and direction of every particle in the universe in order to predict the future?
There are elements of science which seem to suggest that observation itself has an effect on probability.
There is an experiment where scientists fire neutrons or something through a slit in a sheet of iron, and look at the pattern the particles make on the wall (a line the same angle as the slit, vertical).
next they put two slits in the iron…
They fire particles through both slits and what happens is the particles start bouncing off each other due to some messed up phenomenon.
What’s strange is even when they fire a single particle at a time they still seem to bounce off of or “interfere” with each other (as waves would), creating a pattern on the wall which has multiples of the slits of light, not just 1 or 2.
What’s stranger is that when we try to measure which slit a single particle goes through on its way to interfere with an imaginary version of itself, (where in theory it seem to go through both slits to bounce off itself), the pattern disappears as if observation alone changes things.
So now we’ve got scientists postulating worlds of improbability behind our backs but when we turn to view them they disappear.
Don’t watch any videos on attraction theory please, just believe you are in control
This theory doesn’t make sense under infinite or finite universe theory which are the only possibilities with thinking this way. This theory denies infinite universe theory because everything must have a cause but there is no initial cause in an infinite universe. In a finite universe there is no initial cause so it fails to hold true under this theory.
My dice example was an analogy, not a parable. The immense complexity of the universe does not make it magical, it is still made of a web of causes and effects; however intricate it is.
And who said it will always be impossible? Maybe we don’t have the necessary equipment at this time to capture a yet unrevealed aspect of a particle whose behavior now appears nonsensical to us. It doesn’t mean that a particle pops out of our world into some magical realm and then pops back in as if nothing happened. Something is causing it to behave the way it does and we are not yet at the point in our scientific knowledge where we know this cause.
They can only co-exist where by randomness you would mean your own lack of knowledge of an existing causes behind a phenomenon, not to its actual random nature.
First off, “magical” and “intricate web of cause and effects” are not opposites. And what you expressed above is a theory. And so? You can decide that you want to believe it, meaning you can have faith in it, but you can have no idea as to whether or not it’s true. (Which doesn’t mean it’s “magic”, whatever that actually is.) Second, there’s a difference between the constructed “principle of cause and effect” and the construction “causal interdependence of phenomena”. If we accept the premise that all things are insubstantial in that nothing can exist independently of other things, then we can also accept that each thing is caused – by one cause or innumerable causes, it doesn’t matter, metaphysically speaking. We can always carefully and relatively narrowly define “cause and effect” for the purpose of proving a scientific hypothesis. That’s useful and practical and does, indeed, show that the principle is valid as far as it goes. But there are direct causes, indirect causes, conditioned causes, partial causes…that long, intricate and ultimately indecipherable network of causes (at least as language leads us to define them). How would anyone prove scientifically each (or any) component of interrelationship in this network? Where would one start? Or end?
Well, they are certainly not the same. However intricate web of causes and effects is, it still obeys the laws of nature.
If everything has a cause/s or is caused by something else, then if one were to know to know all of the causal elements, then it follows that one would be able to predict the future. Science is exploring the workings of the universe through ever advancing technology and is acquiring more and more information as we go along. I don’t see science stopping until everything is known. It is the nature of scientific exploration. Otherwise, why are we even pursuing science? Why do we want to know more about the world and the universe than we already know? Do we we not know enough already?
I know, and that’s what I was saying, too. “Magic” is a term that is usually used to describe a phenomenon that contradicts the laws of known physics, but it doesn’t mean it actually does contradict the laws of nature, as it most likely means that we have not yet acquired all of the knowledge of the laws of physics, themselves.
I wouldn’t use the term “innumerable”. That only describes our lack of knowledge of actual existing causes, not the quantity of causes themselves. Innumerable implies infinite, but there are certainly not infinite number of causes involved.
The initial purpose of my thread was to use the idea of cause and effect and eventually apply it to the concepts of free will and destiny. It wasn’t in my intention to discuss the actual logistics of acquiring such knowledge. But that is an interesting idea. I don’t think it is impossible for science and technology (I am thinking probably through remote multispectrum and/or molecular scanning, computer modeling, etc.) to reach a level of sophistication to a degree where we can account for every atom on earth (the number of atoms on earth is finite, after all, and the technology is getting exponentially more effective).
