• Gregory
    4.7k
    The word "random" is used in two very related ones. It can mean "spontaneous action" such that world seems to act as if it has free will but no consciousness, and it can mean irregular patterns. I am wondering if the latter is based on anything objective. We all have different tastes in physical appearances. Someone might seem beautiful to someone else, but not to a third person. We all have different tastes in art and music as well. Further, autistic people see patterns within disorder. What is one person's order is another person's mess. Therefore, IQ tests seem to measure how a person scores within an arbitrarily assigned range of what is "smart". If I have a sequence 2,4,8 and ask what comes next, any answer can be right. What if it is the law of the human nature that after two doublings you multiply by 100. The answer would be 800. What if that was the law of just some peoples' genes? They would score low on an IQ test. But the IQ test is not objective then. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, than so is order.

    In conclusion, is chaos theory all bunk?
  • RegularGuy
    2.6k
    People with high IQs in pattern recognition can make a lot of money trading Forex using technical analysis (reading candlestick chart patterns). It may or may not be objective, but it is useful.
  • Joshs
    5.8k
    Is there evidence that they reliably make money over longer periods of time?
  • RegularGuy
    2.6k
    With money management (such as the Kelly criterion and a good reward to risk ratio), yes.
  • MathematicalPhysicist
    45
    Well, if we humans and others exist is there any meaning to the term "disorder"?

    I would guess that a true disorder is not possible...
    My proof for this is our existence, or at least mine I don't know about you zombies. :-)
  • RegularGuy
    2.6k
    I would guess that a true disorder is not possible...
    My proof for this is our existence, or at least mine I don't know about you zombies. :-)
    MathematicalPhysicist

    :smile:
  • fdrake
    6.7k
    In conclusion, is chaos theory all bunk?Gregory

    Made a post describing how "chaos" is actually a property of a system here. Other I made in that discussion talk about the role random variables (which can be deterministically driven anyway) play in them (up to my idiosyncratic interpretation of things).
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    I think Derrida was saying we can never predict the random because true randomness is more random and free than we can imagine. Our concepts of the random and the infinity is an approximation of the substance of those ideas
  • fdrake
    6.7k


    I don't think Derrida actually said anything about randomness? There's a very old reading group on the forum for "Voice and Phenomenon" which goes into a lot of detail, you'll see that he can be quite rigorous.
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    That pattern recognizes works in science can be explained by compatabilism. The free will (the random factor in Bell's theorem and the Quantum eraser experiment) could be parallel to the world and work like Leibniz said about harmony. Newton got his idea of a deterministic world from Descartes, who thought we can in reality know all the workings of the universe (and of all human truth) if we applied ourselves. This rather esoteric, or at least philosophical, opinion doesn't grasp that he world is a lot freer than we may think.

    Anything could have happened in the past, and anything may happen in the future. We never see the "laws" themselves, to know them in their nature.

    Newton thought God stepped every now and then to correct the disorder that naturally happens in this universe.

    Side note: Teilhard believed God let randomness run it's course and help form evolution. The randomness would not be controlled by God, but merely sustained in nature.

    The randon was a demi-god for Teilhard.
  • Joshs
    5.8k
    Derrida deconstucted the modern empirical notion of the random alongside its opposite,determinism, in order to show that this binary presupposes certain underlying metaphysical assumptions about the nature of reality in terms of 'objectivity, physicalism, naturalism, etc.
    In Derrida's thinking(not just Derrida but also the phenomenologists, including Heidegger, there is neither randomness or determinism but codependent subjective-objective relationaltiy
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    If the Christian says "why not drink hemlock since you agree with Hume that any law from anywhere in the universe or other dimensions might intervene to stop your death", I can retort that God might interfere to stop your death, or cause your death from eating a prexel. The Christians have a god to rely on ultimately.

    To be truly philosophical is to be anti-science and be more Buddhistic. I think Teilhard at heart was a Buddhist (after all he cried when he discovered as a child that iron rusts with a Catholic virus in him.

    Become a sage
  • Gregory
    4.7k


    If "the other" is predictable for phenomenologists, than there is no random. I thought Derrida thought writing and thinking too random and subjective to be objective
  • Joshs
    5.8k
    The phenomenologists argue that the notion of objectivity is constituted via intersubjective relations, which makes objectivity always relative to a social field.The 'other' is not predicable, it affects me as something alien, foreign to my previous experieince. At the same time, it is not utterly independent of my history . There is something familiar or recognizable in even the most surprising experience.This does not make it predictable but neither does it make it random in a mathemtical sense.

    Husserl says"
    “We do not say that in the unity of the stream of my lived experiences each lived experience is necessary, necessarily conditioned by the lived experiences which precede it and are co-lived. If we say that every lived experience of an act is motivated, that relations of motivation are intertwined in it, this is not to imply that every meaning-intending is one "in consequence of." When I become aware of a thing, the thesis contained in the perception is not always a thesis "in consequence of": e.g., when I see the night sky lit up by a meteor shower or hear quite unexpectedly the crack of a whip.”
  • Gregory
    4.7k


    If any law can suddenly ooze out into reality at any time, then to our subjectivity the world is random. The many dimensions theory gives even more visual support for this argument
  • Mephist
    352
    About the randomness of sequences, I think a good definition is the following one: a sequence is random if it cannot be generated by a program shorter than the sequence itself.
    In other words, it's all about the quantity of information needed to generate that sequence.
    Short sequences are always random.
  • jgill
    3.9k
    In conclusion, is chaos theory all bunk?Gregory

    You are referring to something other than mathematical chaos theory, which is not bunk IMO.
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    As Heraclitus said, everything may be in flux. I don't see how the human mind can grasp through math the many infinities in which the random can take form
  • RegularGuy
    2.6k
    As Heraclitus said, everything may be in flux. I don't see how the human mind can grasp through math the many infinities in which the random can take formGregory

    On the other hand, Fibonacci patterns exist throughout nature, even in stocks charts. Fractals exist in nature, too.
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    ,

    Patterns are in the eye of the beholder. Patterns work in technology perhaps by a preestablished harmony
  • RegularGuy
    2.6k
    There is chaos and patterns. You can’t separate the human mind from empirical experience.
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    The distinction between chaos and patterns is in the mind of the beholder. Who is to say what the chaos theory would be for a different species
  • RegularGuy
    2.6k
    The distinction between chaos and patterns is in the mind of the beholder. Who is to say what the chaos theory would be for a different speciesGregory

    I presume any technologically advanced alien species would likewise see these patterns, too, and maybe many more.
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    But patterns are nothing more than what humans perceive is beautiful, regardless if infinite chaos can be contained in a mathematical system
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    If we were to get ahead of the random and understand it almost like understanding a person, our actions would still be in control all along by this universe
  • RegularGuy
    2.6k


    I don’t know. Logically that conclusion is inescapable if you only consider us as matter and energy. I even wrote a now unpublished book which I have since rebuffed saying just that.
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    I don't think we can get ahead of the ball with the universe since its always ahead of us! What does the universe rest on, if it's matter. Does a force keep it in place? If the force is from an object we have an infinite regress. So I think meta nothing is like what people call spiritual or Plotinus "pure potency". Like a thought without a thinker, it acts without an actor
  • jgill
    3.9k
    But patterns are nothing more than what humans perceive is beautiful, regardless if infinite chaos can be contained in a mathematical systemGregory

    It might be best to avoid referring to mathematics in this regard. Mathematical chaos theory is a fairly well-defined, logical and coherent area of inquiry. It has to do with iterative systems in the complex plane initially. What does "infinite chaos contained in a mathematical system" really mean? I can generate chaotic behavior in a mathematical context by formulating a complex function and iterating it over regions of the plane. I suppose that's what you're getting at.
  • Gregory
    4.7k


    But how do we know the pattern is not controlling us? We think that we discover patterns, like Descartes thought he discovered innate ideas. It could come from a different source
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    Does not compatibilism completely explain the Quantum Eraser experiment and Bell's theorem away? If there is no random factor with regard to the subject observing, how can it ever be proved that there is randomness out there? I guess on this thread I am trying to argue that you can't prove there is order either. Neither one nor the other
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