TomThomson (9/30/2014)
Stewart "Arturius" Campbell (9/30/2014)
Ed Wagner (9/30/2014)
I don't mean to spark a mathematical debate here, but what is truly random anyway? 😉Randomness leads to unpredicatable outcomes, very much as depicted in Chaos Theory[/url]
e.g. how a solar flare in Ursa Minor could lead to a nova in Andromeda, or a butterfly flapping it's wings in New Mexico leads to a hurricane in China...
Maybe random is not what is predicted by chaos theory, - perhaps chaos theory demonstrates that some results that appear to be random are actually just chaotic deterministic results and not random at all. The trouble with suggesting that what is depicted in chaos theory is random is that it would require us to say that as computational efficiency and our power to observe all factors improve some things that were previously random cease to be random. Currently the geneerally accepted understanding of physics suggests that there is genuine randomness that can't possibly be eliminated by better observation and computation, and there are chunks of mathematics and statistics that are based on that view, so randomness is quite different from anything predicted by chaos theory. So unless you believe in some "hidden-variable" (ie as yet undiscovered dependency) version of quantum dynamics (which would make you an out and out crackpot so far as most scientists and mathematicians are concerned) you can't believe that randomness is what chaos theory predicts.
Sounds like a contradiction, an event which in it self cannot be considered random just because we do not comprehend the causes, resulting in another event (for the lack of better word) in which we have no comprehension of the cause, that's not random, that's an IBM Billing System:-D
😎