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Life .. Random or Determined?

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Determined. Randomness is nothing more than a appellation to events who's causes are either unknown or pointless to declare because what determines them is at a level that is irrelevant to one's focus.
 

Katsuni

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Determined. Randomness is nothing more than a appellation to events who's causes are either unknown or pointless to declare because what determines them is at a level that is irrelevant to one's focus.

Of course how can yeu determine this without knowing said events and causes? There's no way to 100% proove this without knowing every single event and cause, shred of matter and energy in the universe XD
 

ygolo

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It depends on your abstraction level. But if you want a single answer...

Probabilistically determined...at least that is my interpretation of currently accepted science...and I am not including string theory since it hasn't had much (if any) empirical testing.

There are 4 fundamental interactions. There are two forces of limited scale (that is distances that it effects stuff)...the strong nuclear force (responsible for holding nuclei together), the weak nuclear force (responsible for beta decay and other such things). The two other forces have infinite scale, and they are the more familiar electromagnetic force (electric field and magnetic field depends on your reference frame) and the force of gravity.

At base, the universe of particles is governed by Schroedinger's Equation (or rather Dirac's Equation when you account for special relativity), which is an equation of the governing the square root of the probability that particle will be measured at a particular position. The equation also happens to be a wave equation.

Similar equations, Quantum Electrodynamics, describe electromagnetic forces.

Quantum chromodynamics, describes strong nuclear forces.

A theory of weak interactions mimics the theory of electrodynamics except with different mediators.

These theories are all probabilistic in nature. The descriptions are neither complete randomness, not completely determined.

Then there is the completely deterministic description of gravity known as General Relativity.

So at the physical microscopic level things are probabilistic.

But as you get more macroscopic, the averaging effects (law of large numbers, central limit theorem, statistical mechanics, etc.) make the physical world LOOK completely deterministic. This is the world described by classical mechanics and classical electrodynamics.

But as you keep going up in abstraction..chemistry, biology, etc. Things start getting very dynamic and hard to predict, but there remains regularity and an inkling that, underneath it all, it is deterministic. Nevertheless, we model things with a mix of completely deterministic and probabilistically determined ways.

Then we get to the level of individual people...here things are extremely dynamics and essentially chaotic. Psychology, Philosophy, History, etc. all attempt to describe this level, but we are left with things like "consciousness," "choice," and other phenomenon that we are hard pressed to even explain probabilistically. Are these phenomena due solely to complexity, or does the base fundamentally probabilistic nature also play a role?

Then we go up in abstraction and we start to study people in aggregate. This is the realm of demographics, sociology, economics, etc. Here again, we are aided by averaging effects. Things become more predictable, and somewhat amenable to probabilistic descriptions. However, the theories often break down, due to things referred to as "Black Swans" (rare events that have profound effects).

I applaud those who read this far. This is something, I think about a lot.
 

Katsuni

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Love the explaination ygolo, but... I disagree.

The only reason these things are probabilistic in nature, is because we are not capable of knowing all the information at all times, if we learn one piece of information more accurately, we know another piece less accurately. It doesn't mean it's not structured, it just means that we CAN'T know the full extent of it.


Here's a quick example:

A+B=C
There's a sliding door between A and B, covering either one at any time, each time yeu move the door to one side, it exposes the other one, and conceals the first, and recalculates the values of A and B. We know the value of A, by knowing the value of A, the value of B is automatically changed based upon A. As soon as we check whot the value of B is though, the value of A changes. Therefore we can never know both A and B at the same time as we're only able to view one of them.

So as we check on A, we loose sight of whot B is, and the value of B is changed to reflect the answer of whot A is. As we check B, the value of A is changed. We can do this back and forth many times, estimating closer and closer to the guess of whot the relation between the two are, but if we don't know for certain whot that relationship is, there may be errors in it as well. If we get enough points of referance, we can guess whot C is for any given value of A or B, but we can never know for certain 100%. It doesn't mean that this's a randomized situation, or that it's even a probability. Our UNDERSTANDING of it is only able to be measured as a probability. The actual solution itself is completely rigid in structure, we just can't see all ends at the same time.
 

ygolo

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Your perspective is analogous to what is known as the "hidden variable" interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.

Sometimes also called the "realist" position. That is the belief that the particle was at a particular position, but it is just that we don't know where it is.

Another interpretation is the "orthodox" position. Which says the particle wasn't anywhere in particular till you measured it. It was the actual measurement of a particle that produces the position.

In 1964, John Bell came up with a way to distinguish the two positions experimentally. Suffice it to say the experiments come down on the side of the orthodox position, and against the realist position.

That is to say experiments give evidence that until you measure the position of the particle, it really isn't anywhere.

I am not well versed in QM enough to elucidate Bell's argument. However, I am taking a QM class this fall. Hopefully, after that, I will be able to explain why the particle really isn't anywhere.
 

Sacrator

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Planned for adventures yes but for career kinda halfway. I plan with my career so i can have a adventure.
 

Fluffywolf

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Determined/quantifiable. Not religiously.
 

NewEra

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Life is whatever you make of it. So in that way, I guess it's determined.
 

Katsuni

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Ygolo> alright, admittedly I'd forgotten one of the key points that invalidates most of my argument XD

Namely stuff like schrodenger's cat and such which kind of ruins the whole thing. Ah well, then again, even that may make perfect sense and it may be completely dictated by specific laws that we simply can't hope to grasp or understand, especially if there's extra-dimensional thinking involved... I mean even gravity the only way they can even explain why it's so bizzarely weak is because they figure part of it's energy is bleeding off into other dimensions, so it could be that the particles somehow are existing in another state entirely beyond our capability to percieve, and only actually become solid entities in the ones we can actively view once it's forced to interact with stuff on this level.

It could be pretty messed up and complex as hell, but it may still be dictated by predictable, solid rules that we have no grasp on at all. It's just alot harder to proove that as they'd be waaaaay beyond our ability to understand.
 

erm

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It could be pretty messed up and complex as hell, but it may still be dictated by predictable, solid rules that we have no grasp on at all. It's just alot harder to proove that as they'd be waaaaay beyond our ability to understand.

Since it has been all but proven that the Universe is not locally deterministic, I think speculation on that level is truly irrelevant.

Not because it is unknown, but instead, like you say, far beyond our understanding. So far in fact, that we can't know whether concepts of "understanding", or concepts of "laws" and "rules" apply in any way, sense or form.

To put it simply, logic, as we know it, may not apply.

Having said that, gravity and extra-dimensional explanations do indeed seem possible. Possible to understand, possible in effect. Because they are not necessarily the really basic stuff I am referring to. Fundamental Metaphysics and all that. The areas where no answers have been provided, where Quantum Mechanics is slowly delving into as we speak.

Granted, where exactly the cut off point for determinism is, is unknown. Perhaps it cannot be known, and in a sense, is the cut off point.

Whether the (non-temporal) causation chain science gives as an explanation is infinite, or has a start and/or end, is another of those questions. The causation chain being a circle has been ruled out at least, as local determinism was necessary for that.
 

Nyx

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This is kind of a hard question to answer.

A set course of events will happen to an extent largely due to the universal law of Cause and Effect. What you did in a moment was one of infinite choices, but you were going to do that one choice. Your action was recorded in the annals of time. Everything that happens effects something else, thus, changing it. Without change there would be no time. Time is not an external force on us as a clock would have you believe. It is simply change. Life probably appears random at times because it is sometimes very difficult to understand or see the cause(s) and effect(s) of a certain occurrence. The utter complexity of it all is incomprehensible. Time would cease to exist if this law didn't exist. So life is not random on the marco-level. Everything that has ever happened is effecting what is happening now, which is effecting what happens in the future.

To give a rudimentary example:
I broke my arm because I fell down the stairs (you could even get into why your arm physically broke by falling down the stairs). I fell down the stairs because the floor was slippery. The floor was slippery because someone spilled water onto the floor. That person spilled water onto the floor because they were distracted by something and tipped their glass of water over, allowing water to splash onto the floor. They were distracted by that something because...etc

However, when you get down to the quantum level of things these laws do not apply and things start to get a little wacky... You have one of the most basic and famous experiment ... this video explains it simply

YouTube - Dr Quantum - Double Slit Experiment


Quantum physics is counter-intuitive and Einstein did not like it. He was quoted as saying something to the effect of "God doesn't play dice."

Things continue to get weirder when you get below the Planck Scale
Planck scale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

where laws applying to subatomic particles collapse...

How do the quantum and marco-world tie together? Beneath everything there is randomness?

To me this makes sense because in order for us to have a marco-world governed by laws and cause/effect, there must be a world of randomness and counter-intuitiveness, right?

Interestingly, these old Hermetic axioms explain how things work quite plainly. They match up with science and spirituality. Isn't that beautiful?

THE SEVEN HERMETIC PRINCIPLES

Mostly what I see is the overriding principle of Duality, which is another way to say Cause/Effect, Polarity, etc
 

Katsuni

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Einstein also called quantum physics "freaky action at a distance". Which... is admittedly pretty accurate.
 

Argus

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Neither.



Logical chaos, fickle fate, rational randomness. They do co-exist.
 
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