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originally posted in:Secular Sevens
Edited by Dark Turkey: 1/16/2014 9:57:56 PM
38

"Randomness does not exist."

Backstory: I'm taking this deductive logic course centered around a theory called Information Measurement Theory developed by the professor who heads a research group. I'm concerned this will turn out to be a pseudoscientific philosophy course, especially after today. Topics discussed today about the theory were: -Randomness does not exist -It is not possible to control others -It is not possible to influence others -A person defines his/her environment, while simultaneously, the environment defines the person -No person can know all information So I ended up getting into an argument with the prof, the TA, and half of the class about randomness. I argued that randomness does exist, or at minimum, it's arrogant and naive to presume to know that the universe is deterministic. This seems especially true given their fifth theorem that no person can know all information. Examples I cited were dice, queuing theory, radioactive decay, and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Dice and queuing theory are not what one would call "truly random", in the sense that with enough information, one could deterministically predict the outcome with certainty. However, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is impossible to refute without finding some way to expand quantum mechanics to a universal scale. Wave function collapse caused by external mechanisms can only be prevented if nothing in existence is external to the system being observed. So while it's possible that every event is deterministic, that would require knowledge of all things, which is directly contradictory to their fifth theorem. Anyways, I'd like to hear what you think about this "theory" of theirs, the various theorems, and about randomness.

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  • On another note, "It is not possible to control others" and "It is not possible to influence others" not only counteract each other but also make little in the way of any sense at all. Because, for one thing, you can gain control over people by influencing them. If these two statements were true, there would be no laws, there wouldn't be even be any new things created by people since everybody draws inspiration from somewhere therefore making that an influence. In terms to the theory on people and their environment, it is a true thing in some regards. It's a two way street. The environment a young child is placed in ultimately determines what they will do when they are older and have more power and access to change their environment.

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