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I saw a post over on A Little Weird about randomness. Sean’s view is that it doesn’t exist, and that people winning the lottery twice proves it. “we’re told the odds are 419 million to one. That would mean the winner would have to play the lottery every minute - for 796 years” Now this seems like fairly damning proof that the current model of probability is a bit off, but I’d say that there’s always room otherwise. Nobody said that the person who won the lottery did it fairly, for instance.
The idea that nothing is random also brings up an interesting argument I’ve come up with. It involves belief, specifically about anything beyond the body. If you don’t believe in anything beyond the mind and body, then I would say you’d have an easier time swallowing the “nothing is random” idea. Why? Because that means you get to have a free will.
If randomness doesn’t exist, and you have nothing outside of your body, and your brain is the only thing controlling your decisions and actions in life, then you are nothing more then what has happened to you. To elaborate, when you go through life, stuff happens, you are influenced by other people, actions, words, the weather, etc. This leads you to your next thought, or your memory of it makes you react to a similar situation a certain way next time because of how last time turned out. Your brain has action done unto it, it makes physical changes, and then the next time something comes up to it, like a decision, the physical and chemical build of the brain determine your reaction.
But aren’t my thoughts still unique?
No, if there is nothing truly random, and there is nothing beyond the physical, then even your precious thoughts aren’t actually yours. They are the result of what has happened to you, and the situations your environment has put you into. They are traces of all the things that have been put into you, as a person. As I said earlier, without anything beyond the body, and without randomness, you are nothing more then a collection of all the influences that have ever occurred to you.
Having said all of that, I am very happy to say that I think there’s something outside of the body, and the brain. Wouldn’t it at least be nice to believe you have a free will?
-Hatter
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“To elaborate, when you go through life, stuff happens, you are influenced by other people, actions, words, the weather, etc. This leads you to your next thought, or your memory of it makes you react to a similar situation a certain way next time because of how last time turned out.”
I believe in that so much!
And me and my friend had this dialog that actually randomness does not exist as you have put it. Everything can be measured in the universe however if we cant then we call it ‘random’, like in physics or in math. BUT, human thought, I believe is inter-twined with every other thought in the universe, and its too complex to even comprehend how it works. Something like the butterfly effect, magnified till the whole universe.
(I think you already know butterfly effect)
I wonder if you’ve heard of Benjamin Libet? He was a brain/consciousness researcher who did experiments showing that the brain reacts (i.e. makes a decision) to stimulus HALF A SECOND before we are conscious of the stimulus. More info here. Very fascinating, and a bit scary.
Varyd,
Yes, that tornado causing butterfly. That idea you have sounds related to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, where if you observe something you change the outcome. The idea being that the observer changes the thing being observed.
That is an interesting idea. I’ve been somewhere along the same lines. Coincidence has become more and more of a common occurrence for me, oddly enough as I begin to think in a different way. Not just isolated incidents, but many “coincidences” per day. I doubt it’s just a raised awareness of such occurrences, but an actual increase in the number of events. Add that idea of thoughts effecting reality in with the chaos theory as you have, and that does get very complex. That sounds like a fairly plausible idea you’ve got.
Ben,
I didn’t know his name, but I remember that thing with the baseball players and the pre-emptive thinking. I’d forgotten about it, but that is extremely interesting. The sheer amount of things that could be explained and that this could be explained by is mind boggling.
-Hatter
“The sheer amount of things that could be explained and that this could be explained by is mind boggling.”
I know what you mean. It’s almost like I don’t even know how to react to this information. (Wait - my subconscious has already done it for me half a second ago!
But seriously… the implications here give me a kind of intellectual paralysis. I just don’t know what to think of this study.
Well, logically, randomness doesn't exist. Whoops, it does… as electricity… lol… meaning randomness is a concept that humans created to define things that have a number of variables that processing would be unprofitable for them to do (Energetic requirements). But the fact is that reactions are orderly, and, even if we can't grasp all the details (variables) of one, we at least can live in the comforting idea that everything is logical.