Quote:
A) Random is the opposite of deterministic.
Saying that something is "random" is a statement about that event. It's an ontological thing.
Saying something is "unpredictable" is really a statement about us and out knowledge of that thing. It is an epistemological thing.
A "random" number generator is actually not random. It is deterministic, but unpredictable.
Measuring the spin of a photon is actually random.
as for B, I honestly don't know what that is directed at. Care to explain?
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I'm not sure the jury is out on whether the spin of a photon is random, or just horribly unpredictable. It certainly is of a different order of unpredictableness in that it is impossible to predict what the spin will be before taking your measurement. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a deeper process that is currently inaccessible to us, as Bohm might have hoped. I don't know if this is the case, and I'm certainly not in a position to offer any theories as to what that deeper process might be. However, I'm not willing to accept (yet) that it is truely random.
I'd go as far as to wonder whether randomness is an abstract concept that may not actually exist in the physical world.
Re point B - Acceptance that there can be truely random occurances (without knowing why) seems counter to the scientific way of thinking. Progress over the centuries has been based on people asking questions and looking ever deeper into the forces of nature. Science always asks the question "Why is that so?" To stop doing so and accept that something "just is" is, in my eyes, akin to believing the words of the wise old Jews who first provided a 'reasonable' set of answers as written in Genesis.
Ultimately, they may be right, as may you, but I don't see any reason to suppose that the universe works this way. To paraphrase Mr Einstein, I find difficulty with the notion that "God Plays Dice".