Another discussion day I guess. Do random events exist? I mean events that aren't just seemingly random, but undeniably random. For the most part, when we think of random ewe think of events that only simulate randomness. For example, rolling dice. When you roll the dice, it is a complex chain of laws of physics that produce the result. It isn't somethng that truely has an equal chance of all possibilities happening. Given the starting conditions of the roll, there will always be only one outcome.
Can you think of any events that are truely random?
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Certain, seemingly random behaviors of particles might be the only thing in the known universe that could be considered random(as in having no definite known cause) at this time.
ReplyDeleteOf course, it is possible(and probable) that our technology simply isn't sophisticated enough yet to detect the cause of their behavior. It's quite likely there are unseen forces/energy and unseen dimensions having subtle(and not so subtle) influence on particles, and when this influence is unobservable it makes behavior appear random.
I don't think there's really any event that could be traced back to have no first cause. Maybe the Big Bang? But even there, it's just a matter of technology being sophisticated enough...
Sabnock,you brought up something interesting. If there are no events in existence which have no cause then how does anything ever happen? To explain how something happened normally we look at the event that caused the event in question. But what caused the event that caused the other event that caused our event? And this can regress infinitely unless something, somewhere just happens.
ReplyDeleteSome philosopher's use calculus to solve this. As events keep regressing they keep approximating 0 and eventually something approximately have no cause. I'm not sure something approximating no cause is exactly the same as something with no cause.