Thoughts from 05.12.2011:
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What exactly would random or chance look like if it did, in fact, actually exist? An observation that has, at its base, no reason for happening? Is it not true that in empirical science all events have a causal relation that, although not deeply metaphysically explanatory, is related to something prior and observable, measurable, determinable?
Even in quantum physics do we say that certain events are random or that they are, to our insufficient methods of observation, practically random? Being almost or close to random is not random. And, just because our instruments fail to see close enough or fast enough does not also entail that these happenings at a quantum level are, by any means, chance or random occurrances.
Accidents may not happen here though we can not necessarily always see them as non-accidents because our powers of prediction and observation may fail us at various levels cosmologically and at the microscopic microcosmic worlds of the sub-atomic particles that makes up the stored energy we call the "physical" world.
Earlier Thoughts:
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Random means that some event is caused by chance rather than by determinable relation
to some other event.
This means that two systems given the same input will not always give
the same output.
Does random actually ever occur, and, if so, how can we know something was a random event rather than determined?
It may seem, on the surface, that random does exist.
But, when the idea is properly scrutinized, there seems to be much more to the question of
whether or not there is such a thing as chance in the universe. In our universe, everything affects everything else in some way.
Through physical
forces, all matter and energy affects all other matter and energy; matter simply being another form of energy that is in a potential state of being. Therefore,
gravitational effects from the planets, the sun, other galaxies, and other galaxy clusters
affect us. (I think gravity is misunderstood, but these thoughts are on my page about space.)
The chairs we sit in, the tables we write on, the computers we type on,
everything affects everything else in some minute but actual way. And, all it takes is one
little anomaly to cause catastrophic differences.
The butterfly effect is explained in a number of different ways, but is basically the
idea that a small or seemingly insignificant thing can cause or set of a chain of events
that may appear to be totally unrelated to the original cause of the consequence.
The analogy goes somewhat like this: A butterfly flaps its wings near a horse in South
America, causing the pollen in the air to stir, causing the horse to sneeze. The horse
makes a commotion and causes a stampede of hundreds of horses, which slightly affects the
wind currents. The wind currents, being altered, affect larger wind currents, and the
global weather overall.
Because the global weather system was affected, it rains in
upstate New York five minutes before it would have otherwise, in a place a few hundred
yards away from where it would have begun raining otherwise.
So, the butterfly in South
America caused the rain in New York. This example may seem absurd, but it is easily made
into more tangible examples. You sneeze, and knock over a drink that is sitting on your desk. This causes you to get
up and get a paper towel from the bathroom, where you slip and fall on the tile floor.
You
hit your head, and end up in the hospital. While at the hospital, a nurse reads your chart
wrong which causes the surgeon to amputate your right leg. So, your leg was amputated
because you sneezed.
The random in the universe would not, in any way, be able to reside at this level of
complexity. We can show, in the above example, that your leg was actually amputated
because you sneezed. Now, something caused you to sneeze, and something before that caused
you to cause you to sneeze. Therefore the cause of things seems to be infinite until the
beginning of the universe, if there was such a beginning.
1. All thing affect all other things in some way.
2. We are a physical entity (I am assuming this means something and it is true, for the moment), affected like all other things.
3. Our thoughts are affected by other things- if our thoughts are physically instantiated, which I can assume in this context.
4. Can we have random thought? Is our thought determined?
