[h1karu]

Yeah you bring up an excellent point.. that there's not a way to prove perfect knowledge of any given system because you can't rule out the existence of factors that you don't know about and are unable to measure. Your idea of "a universe that controls our own" seems a little far out and quasi-mystical to me, but I do think that the probability seems quite high that there may be forces acting upon any given system which we are not yet capable of measuring (within our universe). After all throughout history science has continually discovered new factors outside of it's previous range of measurement.

I suppose that as long as you're using the word random as a placeholder for a best guess, estimate, or assumption about reality then I think you're on solid ground. I only meant to point out that there's no way of scientifically proving that randomness exists apart from a concept or pointer in the mind of man.

[jimktrains2]

Well, what I meant to mean was that given perfect information about _our_ universe, which would exclude something like the run-time that we're being simulated in for instance, we still can't know the outcome of certain quantum processes with 100% certainty.

Given knowledge of _all input to a system_ and still not being able to know the outcome seems like a good definition for random. You're right, though, it could just have an extremely long period.

[h1karu]

You start by asking me to make an enormous leap of faith (free miracle) which is to assume that it's possible to know for sure whether or not you have perfect information about any given system. I simply can't fathom how such an assumption could ever be reasonably made so therefor I really have no way to follow along with the rest of your reasoning. I appreciate hearing you perspective though.

“The hard swallow built into science is this business about the big bang… This is the notion that the universe, for no reason, sprang from nothing in a single instant… notice that this is the limit test for credulity. Whether you believe this or not, notice that it is not possible to conceive of something more unlikely, or less likely to be believed. I defy anyone. It’s just the limit case for unlikelihood: that the universe would spring from nothing in a single instant for no reason… It is in fact no different than saying, “and then God said, ‘Let there be light!’ What the philosophers of science are saying is “give us one free miracle and we will roll from that point forward, from the birth of time to the crack of doom.” -Terence McKenna

[JoeAltmaier]

Nobody's asking for anything. Its an observation, nothing more - the universe used to exist as a point and expanded from there. Everything we see, everywhere, points to this. No more a miracle than anything else we see - gravity, light, matter.

[h1karu]

> the universe used to exist as a point and expanded from there. Everything we see, everywhere, points to this.

Yes but if I understand them correctly most modern scientists think that "everything we see" is only a miniscule fragment of the universe. The vast majority of the universe they assert is invisible and it's characteristics are said to be unknown to man. They use placeholder words to describe the vast majority of the universe such as "dark energy" or "dark matter".

If you hold to such a view then how is it reasonable to assume that science has enough data to draw any conclusions about the mechanics of the universe as a whole ? Isn't it analogous to the proverbial blind man who feels one small part of an elephant and assumes he understands what it is and how it works ?

To be clear I haven't been arguing against the existence of randomness nor against the existence of the big bang, because truly I don't hold any beliefs either for or against their existence. I'm just honest enough to admit that I don't know, whereas it seems most academics at least are convinced that they do know. My larger point is simply that science does not have the means by which to ascertain whether or not these things exist or ever have existed with any kind of reasonable accuracy.

Society just likes to pretend that we know more than we really do for political reasons and because it makes us feel more at ease in general. This psychological phenomena is well documented with vast amounts of supporting evidence dating all the way back through the history of science.

[nitrogen]

"Perfect knowledge" in this case is probably an assumption as part of a mathematical definition. E.g. "Assume a hypothetical time-varying universe U exists, and the current time state and all previous states of the universe are perfectly known. Iff the following state of U is unpredictable even with this knowledge, U is defined to be truly random."

The idea that randomness has to "come from" somewhere is a different idea, and the question of whether randomness or order is the fundamental state, and the other an emergent property, is an interesting question indeed.

> I'm just honest enough to admit that I don't know, whereas it seems most academics at least are convinced that they do know.

If you don't know, how can you be sure they don't either?

[h1karu]

To posit such a thing as "all previous states" implies that a universe is a finite state machine whereas for all we know the universe could be infinite in which case the value "all previous states" becomes a mathematical impossibility.

> If you don't know, how can you be sure they don't either?

I don't mean to assert any claim about individuals and their personal knowledge I'm merely suggesting that in my opinion the global community of scientists as represented in academia, scientific journals, and in popular literature hasn't made a compelling case for having met it's own scientific burden of evidence (scientific method) to be able to say that "science knows".

In the past that burden of evidence was lower because we had reason to believe that the universe was a much smaller place and that we could measure a much larger percentage of it, but given what we know today that burden of evidence has grown tremendously to the point where any serious scientist should admit to himself that science doesn't know.