Quote:
Originally posted by analog
Is anything random? I'm not talking about Matrix bullshit, predestination, I mean the real thing. Is there such a thing as truly "random"?
|
I believe that more than one fellow has gotten extremely rich by figuring how to predict what others thought were random events (research early pseudo-random number generators and the lottery or vegas). I an not sure whether anything is truly random or whether we simply lack the ability to measure and analyze the requisite data. My guess is that we might see at least uncertain behavior at a quantum level which is sort of like randomness (i.e. the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle).
In addition to tying into chaos theory, generation of random numbers is critical to cryptography and I would imagine that if you studied some of the seminal works in cryptography you might learn a thing or two about randomness.
So I guess my conclusion is that it depends on your definition of randomness. If you include the caveat that there is a certain lack of information presented to the predictor, then yes, there is randomness. This is what probability theory is predicated upon. Given complete information and the theory to analyze it, maybe not.