Topic: Can you prove Randomness? (Read 1248 times)

ha! therefore randomness exists outside of the human mind. gotcha! it exist LOL 

i hope someone else can see the logic in this post 

Would love to see the proof of that. Not that I am sure I would understand if it has really been published.

BTW, what about the decimals of PI or the frequency of prime numbers? Are these random?

Re physics and randomness, the chaotic systems are those in which minor variations of the input produce major changes in the outputs or results, thus being nearly impossible to predict or predict fully. For example, the weather, etc... In those cases, we may think of random as "not known", because for human purposes not knowing or not knowing the probability could be good enough.

No, that is not a major question of any kind. Science uses theories that describe how limited models of reality work. So yes, quantum mechanics are a human construct that partially explains and describes repeatable observations of the physical world, limited to certain variables.

Perhaps it is easier to understand if you ask if "humans have invented gravity".



That is not much of a problem. In science not everything has the same degree of certainty nor has been equally proven nor equally formalised. This is particularly important for the theories that are relatively new and try to explain the latest observations.

For example, the Theory of Gravity is well established and no serious scientist would contest it. However the theories that deal with quantum mechanics and the nature of matter at that level are still just theories.

There are two ways of advancing at least: you observe and then explain or you predict and then try to find how to validate the theory. Both of this are used in physics frequently. A surprising observation may disprove a theory (e.g. something that falls upwards at a macroscopic level would disprove gravity) and a new construct would need to be developed to explain the facts.

I think that one classic example is "if positives repel each other, how are the protons of an atom held together in the nucleus". That requires a construct to describe the nuclear interactions. But it is also possible to predict, e.g. "if the Theory of Relativity is true, then there should be a gravitational lens effect" which has been later verified.

randomness is the lack of knowledge of how the end result was achieved.

true randomness is where even with backward engineering/pattern recognition/brute force. no one can replicate the method within their lifetime to get the result.

so again
my first number: 9472957392
if you can tell me what my next number, then you have proved randomness does not exist.
if you cant answer. then no point even suggesting randomness does not exist

randomness is about something that cannot be easily measured due to the amount of variables involved where predictability/solving becomes impossible

however a simple example of a drunk persons walk is not unpredictable. even just the description, we can predict that the drunk is going to stagger around

easiiest way to prove randomness
..
my first number is 9472957392
what is my next number

if you cant guess it. or predict it or calculate it. or solve it. then randomness has been proved

a weak display of randomness. is the game sudoku. where it randomly places 7 numbers in the 9x9 grid. and lets you work out where the other numbers should go.

if you know enough rules of the game. you can work it out quite quick

Well, that's a good question! I would like to share with you my thoughts on randomness

I studied quantitative finance discipline in my master's degree. We saw the Brownian movement, as it was discovered by Robert Brown in the year 1827 and that later Albert Einstein published an article on physics / statistics on the Brownian movement in which it was based on the atomic hypothesis
But this phenomenon of Brownian motion is the effect of collisions of molecules in the liquid with particles in suspension.

The movement is based on
• pollen size;
• molecule size;
• energy of the molecules.



Another classic example of a Brownian movement/randomness (random walk) is the walking of a drunk person.

A great book that I recommend and that I read about this discipline / randomness is "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" - Leonardo Mlodinow

I hope I've helped  

This thread might interest you: How random the last digit of a block hash really is? If you can find a 'pattern' in the last digit of a block hash, you may now have monetary gain.

We also use word likes "talent" when theres pretty much no such thing either) To simplify communications probably.

The problem is that we have started to progress on things that we haven't proven. What kind of progression is such? And even with strict scientific examination protocols, we are finding that some of the things we have prove factual, are not really the fact at all.

The problem isn't that we are weak at finding things out. The problem is that many scientists don't want to admit that some of their facts are not facts at all. They have their reasons, of course... like that expressing such would uproot all of science, and they would lose good, easy, money-filled university jobs.


When you look at the complete definition of random at https://www.dictionary.com/browse/random?s=t, you can see that random really means that people simply don't know.

The idea behind the development of science is both progression in the knowledge acquired using the scientific instrument and progression in the meta-scientific process: you have to improve the tool you are using to uncover knowledge.

That's why something like the Dunning-Kruger effect arises: people who lack the metacognitive skill to determine that their process is not working reliably.

Of course, quantum has its limits. If it didn't, we could use it in toasters and light bulbs without having to apply outside energy.

Quantum (in its outer fringes) suggests something like this. Look at the wall. The wallpaper is pretty. Or maybe you have simple paint on your wall. But what if there isn't anything behind the paint? What if there isn't any drywall or studs, and not really even paint, but only the surface of the paint? Drywall and studs were there when the wall was built, but quantum suggests that they might not be there, at least not until you bust a hole in the wall, and suddenly they are there again.

Suppose that you never heard of a stud tester, before. But you found one in the hardware store, and bought it just to see what would happen. It worked. But why? Maybe only because of the belief of the inventors... belief strengthened when other people used it as well.

The point is, we don't know that the above isn't the way things work. The only reason why a scientific invention doesn't work is that there aren't any people who believe that it does work. The scientists proves out his theory of the invention, using science that works (because people believe it), and finally the invention works.

Sounds like I am trying to prove random. But what I am really showing is that quantum upsets everything we know about why things work the way they do.

In a deeper sense, perhaps the reason why we don't have a proper political climate, is that there are some people who strongly believe that the turbulent political climate is the way things should be.

Much modern technology relies on the application of laws of quantum mechanics. Yes, it exists and is a big part of the technological underpinning of society. It's not just hypothetical cats in boxes. If you're interested, there's a nice overview here of QM in toasters, light bulbs and, of course, computers.
Indeed, some very esoteric and counter-intuitive rules of the quantum world have been proven and put to use, even teleportation - it may not be star-trek-style 'beam me up' stuff, but it is true, verifiable and repeatable.

Quantum mechanics is quite well understood mathematically, and scientists and engineers have been able to apply those laws to build many of the things we see around us... but as for what QM is and what it means and what its implications are for a human understanding of the universe, these are profound questions to which we may never have the answers.

One major question about this is, Does quantum exist in nature, or have we invented it? Quantum, being what it is, if we seem to find it in nature, perhaps we invented/created it exactly at the same "moment" we thought we discovered it. Quantum is not a good test for the randomness question.

The first thing that franky1 said is, "what ordered the universe
well the big bang, initially and then the magnetic field and mass,weight of the particals impacting each other as they spread."

If he meant "the beginning" as opposed to a literal "Big Bang," then he might be correct. But if he meant the literal Big Bang, then we have an unknown. Why?

Big Bang Theory essentially says that the universe is constantly changing. If this is the case, how can we use current standards and understandings of math and time and astronomy and even physics to calculate BB? Do we think that time and math remained the same while the rest of the universe changed? Why would we think such?

Big Bang is an unknown. How far back can we go with accuracy? Even if randomness doesn't match any of the way the universe is now, was the universe always this way? How can we accurately extrapolate back to "the beginning" without knowing all the factors that might have influenced changes in physics along the way, as we go backward in our extrapolation?

Yet - if it was limited to being one or the other it wouldn't be infinite.

So there is the paradox. Either randomness exists with infinity or infinity doesn't exist.

So what exists at the end ?

^ something I will gladly agree on

I'll reluctantly concede the point.

It is provably unpredictable though, which is not the case for any classical (non-quantum) approach. And if this is the case, then it does make a perfect 'random' number generator. I'll stand my ground from a practical perspective: we can prove something to be fundamentally unpredictable, but from the overall philosophical perspective, yes, you're right. It's a deterministic universe (as far as we know). Perhaps one day, delving further into the counter-intuitive workings of quantum mechanics, we may uncover evidence to the contrary... or perhaps not.

No worries! but you kinda indirectly said we can't prove randomness... Lemme explain how because you can't put every atom in the same place, same energy level etc., and then make the same measurement choices you would get a different experimental result that is my whole point based on. If we were to have the ability to pull this off and the results ended up as something else only then you will have the grounds to make an argument for randomness. But since this can never be the case, there is no certainty that the results are truly random and just appear to be random in the smaller picture...

Basically, I meant the separation of the initial conditions from the result, with the separation being such that no information can travel between the two unless it moves faster than the speed of light. The experiment I linked to uses quantum entanglement to achieve this. This differs from the classical 'random' coin toss in that with the coin toss the initial choice of how hard to flip the coin, at what angle, etc, are right there with you and create an essentially predetermined (although phenomenally difficult to calculate) result.

For the quantum experiment, I wasn't suggesting that if you put every atom in the same place, same energy level etc., and then made the same measurement choices you would get a different experimental result - although on reading it back I appreciate I wasn't clear enough, sorry. What I meant was that you can repeat the experiment and always get random (and different) results, the classical analogy being a coin toss in which the speed and angle of the coin toss, air resistance, temperature, humidity etc have no bearing on the result.

On a side note, the question of time as an initial condition is a difficult one, and we start to edge into metaphysics. (I'm trying to not sound pompous and pretentious here, but it's a struggle!) Time isn't something that is or can be measured directly. What we do is to measure things - e.g. clock hands - as they move through time. Time itself (along with spatial position) is a part of the measurement framework itself, rather than something that sits within it.

@Cnut its something which i am still reading/watching about... I will leave my thoughts here once i have read enough on the subject...


what does this mean? I mean one of the conditions which won't be true is time it self... Can you explain what do you mean by exact same initial conditions? There is no way you can travel back in time...

It's not really a question of resources; it's a physical law that there's a limit to precision in this sort of two-variable system.

The more precisely position is known, the less precisely we can measure the momentum. This is because, in a wave function, position and momentum are conjugate variables. A simplistic classical analogy that is often used is frequency and time - if we play a musical note, then the longer we play it for the more accurately we can determine its frequency, but the time at which the note occurs becomes longer, i.e. smeared out and impossible to identify as a point. If instead we play the note extremely briefly, then it has a much more definite time, but we can't pin down its frequency with much precision.

As for provably random - what do you think about my point above? (and diagram below)

Arguably true randomness can never be obtained in a classical system, but an entirely quantum system is a different matter. Quantum entanglement is a fascinating subject; in addition to being a source of true random numbers, it is the basic principle that allows the processing power of quantum computers to scale up exponentially (2ⁿ) as new qubits are added.


_{https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0019-0}

The statement is contradictory...




Even if we will never have enough resources to calculate this, it still doesn't actually prove Randomness exists.

P.S gonna read more about cosmic microwave background random bit generator

I'll only respond to this part with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle:
If you can't know speed and velocity of a particle exactly, you can't predict an impact, which means you can never have enough resources to identify this random event.

I like the use of cosmic microwave background radiation power spectrum as a random bit generator: there's no way you can ever predict the radiation, and if you would try to measure it outside the random generator, all you accomplish is changing the random output.

Infinity is infinitely random and infinitely ordered.

True for a coin toss, but not for all physics - certainly not for quantum mechanics. Have a look at the article I linked to above if you're interested. It's not just 100% random, it's provably so using the speed of light as a limiter. Fascinating stuff.

Ignorance != Randomness...

P.S this thread has nothing to do with gambling...

A coin toss is physics. If all the variables are known you could predict it. But prior to the toss (if conducted without deliberate bias) all the variables are not known so for the purpose of gambling or predicting the outcome it will be random with even odds.

What my premise is that our lack of ability to account for "every" "variable" makes things "appear" "Patternless". Like E.g a coin toss, It may appear to be "Random" 50/50 event but in reality if you were given all the variables like e.g wind etc. You could "predict" with more than 50% "certainty" the outcome.

BTW I totally agree with what @Franky1 said...

In science you cannot conclusively prove that something does not exist. Absence of proof that something exists indicates that something is likely not to exist.

Random is the opposite of pattern or ordered.
Absence of a pattern or order is an indication that it may be random.

what ordered the universe
well the big bang, initially and then the magnetic field and mass,weight of the particals impacting each other as they spread

take a grenade and stick nails around it
\ | /
- o -
/ | \

you can predict the direction the nails are going to go initially
however if you then change the density and size of nails and layer different ones. and then when the explosion happens. if you can view it fast enough. you see that some nails impact others changing the trajectory of some of the nails
however if you then use magnetic nails aswell when the explosion happens those nails can push and pull on other nails to make other nails change trajectory
if you know the math of the pull or push you can predict the trajectory.. even the ancient military knew this by knowing the weight and force of a arrow, cannonball vs the force of gravity/wind to become very accurate at hitting the target

nothing is actually truely random. chaos is just not knowing all the variables that caused the result
but randomness just needs to have too many variables involved to make it increasingly difficult to predict for it to be acceptable as not predictable

many tests are made by brute forcing the random generator over and over and over again to see if patterns emerge to show how limited the generator is.
other tests reverse engineer the generator to learn all variables involved to see if they can design a predictor

nothing is 100%.. but the less predictable something is the better.
no one can say nothing is ever going to be unpredictable. because if you put enough effort into finding out all the variables and combinations of possibilities eventually you could predict it. but as long as it would take many many lifetimes to predict a result for an event that only lasts a couple seconds. makes it labour/time expensive and not worth attempting. thus making it acceptable to use such generator

things like ECDSA are very predictable.. IF you know all the variables.
the formulae is very public and one of the variables is public. but the secret to ECDSA's success is by keeping one of the variables private. and that then makes solving a specific keypair difficult to a magnitude of millenia to bruteforce a result using the limited variables available to the public, yet the person that does know the secret variable can create a solution in milliseconds

Not knowing the pattern yet and patternless are two different things.
I think we've achieved such techonology in order to be able to write programs which are going to drop numbers their authors are impossible to predict because they do not have a pattern.
If the results weren't truly random, then we'd already see people breaking the code and winning massive amounts of bitcoins on dice games all accross the web.
I believe the incentive to do that is huge. But it hasn't happened. Why?

I think we are being hypocritical by saying that. We mock people who believe in a deity for believing in things like "Magic" yet we have our own words for describing things we can't explain yet. Rather than saying "Random", "We Don't know the pattern yet" would be a better way to put things forward as it will encourage us to look deeper into things and discover these new patterns. There is a difference in how an academic will see the word "Random" and what an average joe will make of it. I feel like when we use words like "Random" this leads to ignorance, Religious folks are a perfect example of this. I don't want to see Science become a thing which it separates itself from. So yes words do matter...

I think you might be getting too hung up on words.

Sure, we can't prove that the whole universe isn't deterministic and therefore can't prove that randomness exists at all.  But so what?

When we talk about using randomness the applications we talk about aren't at all troubled by that problem. They usually only care that the random numbers are uniformly distributed and are strongly unpredictable to other people.

It doesn't matter if some hypothetical god could see your dice rolls in advance when you're playing dice against grandma.

It's like complaining someone calls a ball a sphere, even though it can't be because it's made of copper and there is no way to pack the relevant atoms into an an absolutely perfect sphere.

well, that's the underlying line of enquiry in the entire field of physics/science. "It" is highly unlikely to be a "who", and there is abundant evidence that "it" is a series of phenomenological "what"s. No-one thus far knows any absolute answers.



depends who you ask. There are several theories concerning the fundamental nature of the universe, and they sometimes contradict one another.

Arguably, yes, you can create something that is provably random by exploiting the properties of quantum mechanical systems. For example experimental tests for violations of the Bell Inequality generate genuinely random results (provable when the detection loophole is closed). There has (inevitably) been some work done in this area. Take a look at this report, or this simple overview of it.

The crucial point here is that in quantum mechanics, repeating an experiment with the exact same initial conditions does not result in the exact same outcome. It's not like a coin toss, where if you can measure everything from the dirt on the coin to the air resistance, speed and angle of launch, friction, etc, and then repeat the conditions exactly atom-by-atom, you end up with the exact same result. And there's no guessable or deteriorating seed generator, either. It's pure quantum randomness, a law of nature.

The Bell Inequality test is crucial because this is how you prove that the result is pure and has not been tampered with - because nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

Edit: Have a look at this one, too.

If so, Who/What ordered this whole universe? What are the leading theories in this regard?


But then again it's our ignorance that we can't account for all the factors.


Thank you for this, but turns out it doesn't Prove Randomness exists in the real world. These are mere tests which give us an appearance that the data set is "Randomish".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_tests

sure, 100% disordered might not be possible. But the degree of entropy (i.e. disorder) can be measured by assessing and comparing states of ordered-ness, although presumably the technique for doing so is subject to the most refined definition we currently have determing unordered groups of numbers. I suspect, i.e. don't know, that this field of study in mathematics is still alive and well, if so there's certainly room for improvement on how we conceptualize randomness.

I personally believe that there is no such thing as "Random". Science is basically the study of Patterns. For the Patterns, we can't identify yet we through in the words like "Random / Chance/ Luck/ Chaos" etc. It's the equivalent to the word "Magic". I'm not a determinist btw. It's just our lack of knowledge at this point. One day given that we have enough resources to identify these "Random Patterns", they won't be "Random" anymore. So my question is why do we even use words like "Random" when we can't even prove Randomness exists...