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[Chronas]

A (fair) coin flip only has two states, but is random.

To be fair, a fair coin flip is just random in a practical sense. In Newtonian physics, there is no randomness. The face of the coin pointing up will be determined by the strength you put into the flip. 

Plus wind, temperature, distance from landing, various properties of the landing surface...
The list goes on and was put much more concisely previously in the thread.

Would the world be so enjoyable if we had complete understanding of every factor in every situation?

[CodexDraco]

Yes.

Oh, it was a rhetorical question?

[Mrhappyface]

Coins have 3 sides you know. 1 in 400 chance though.

[Draco18s]

Coins have 3 sides you know. 1 in 400 chance though.

I'll give you a good bet on "edge."

[Mrhappyface]

Three sides, two edges to be precise.

[Siquo]

A (fair) coin flip only has two states, but is random.

To be fair, a fair coin flip is just random in a practical sense. In Newtonian physics, there is no randomness. The face of the coin pointing up will be determined by the strength you put into the flip. 

Yeah... Except that Newtonian physics are only really used for large object approximations. Given enough coinflips, one of em is bound to be changed due to unpredictable quantummechanic effects.

Speaking of which, there was this company that used webcams aimed at lavalamps to seed random numbers. After a week they suddenly found out they forgot to take the cap off of the lens, but it didn't matter: the natural "noise" from the webcam was random enough already (and they sold those numbers). So just some simple input from "outside" is enough to create enough randomness for high-end usage. (source: http://www.random.org/media/Wired-2003.html). Others use people typing, random mousemovements, or any other type of analogue-to-digital input. Point being: analogue is better

As to derails: I'm suspecting azrael of trolling after thread #x of trivial questions.

[Rafal99]

As to derails: I'm suspecting azrael of trolling after thread #x of trivial questions.

From the amount of his threads, quality of their content and grammar of his sentences I suspect he is 10-12yo with ADHD (no offense meant). Of course I can't be sure but there is high probability I am right. But he doesn't seem to be intentionally trolling imo.
(Sorry for derailing the derail)

[Nyan Thousand]

There is a school of thought regarding randomness. Say we have a coin and we flip it. Now, technically, the chance of it landing on either side isn't entirely random, since one side is heavier, the unequal distribution of force, wind direction, air molecules colliding and so on, right? That's why we can say that a coin would be more likely to land on heads (since heads is usually heavier), emphasis on MORE LIKELY. As the amount of information we know about the surrounding phenomenon (coin toss) increases, we can better approximate the result. But, say we know ALL of these values. I mean, ALL of it, and their effects on the coin. If we know absolutely everything there is to know about the coin toss, then we can tell, with absolute certainty 100% of the time how the coin toss is going to work out. Under this line of thought, randomness in non-quantum scales can be thought of as a sort of fog of war, and information that we don't know is attributed to "randomness". Chaos theory and the butterfly effect can also be summed up in this manner; all actions are the summation of smaller actions, which leads to the conclusion that two seemingly unrelated phenomena (butterflies and hurricanes) are actually related. Now, I'm not going to pretend that this is true. Maybe it's not. Apparently this school of thought doesn't apply at the quantum level (of course, the entirety of classical mechanics doesn't apply at the quantum level), maybe. Maybe it does. Maybe the uncertainty principle is just something we don't know yet, and the observer effect is just something coincidental.

The point I'm trying to make is, maybe nothing's random. When the time comes that we understand absolutely everything in the universe, the universe suddenly becomes deterministic. Which leads me to my next point: A deterministic universe implies no free will.

[Jeoshua]

Your posting assumes, Nyan Thousand, that anyone has been able to gather all information on a coin toss and accurately, with 100% certainty, always predict how the coin is going to fall.

And I can find no evidence of that.  Maybe someone with access to supercomputers and scientific grade equipment has done it, but I can't seem to find any mention of it.

On the other hand,  I can find plenty of information about the difficulties involved in knowing the position and motion of a particle at the same time, lots of information about quantum effects, and other such things that are non-deterministic.

So your point about determinism and free will fails to hold any truth to it, since the thoughts that led up to it are not provable.

[Nyan Thousand]

Your posting assumes, Nyan Thousand, that anyone has been able to gather all information on a coin toss and accurately, with 100% certainty, always predict how the coin is going to fall.

And I can find no evidence of that.  Maybe someone with access to supercomputers and scientific grade equipment has done it, but I can't seem to find any mention of it.

On the other hand,  I can find plenty of information about the difficulties involved in knowing the position and motion of a particle at the same time, lots of information about quantum effects, and other such things that are non-deterministic.

So your point about determinism and free will fails to hold any truth to it, since the thoughts that led up to it are not provable.

Yes, I am assuming. Allow me to indulge you in a thought experiment. First off, I see no reason why we can't predict with 100% certainty how a coin would fall, assuming we know absolutely everything about how it's going to work out. Let's take another example. We know how 1+1 will always equal to, right? It's always two, no matter how you look at it. 1+1=2 has been proven to hold true forever, assuming the things that make it true stay that way of course (somebody might change the fundamental values of one and two, for example)

Let's abstracize a bit: If you go to the roof of your house and drop a ball, it will always fall down, due to gravity. We know that. Because we know that little bit about gravity, you can always say, "If I drop this ball, it will fall." right? This is, of course, excluding other factors that might make it not fall.

One last example: On a projectile motion problem in a physics exam, you are asked to find the ymax of a certain projectile. You can get this, if the relevant data has been given to you, right? Assuming that gravity, Vo and theta are the only things that actually matter in the universe (i.e., no drag, no nothing motherfucker), given those values, you can always say that ymax=whatever.

Let's go back to our coin toss example. Right now, if you make a coin toss, you can only conclude that the coin will land on one side. If you know that the coin is biased on one side, you can make an assumption. You can conclude that the coin would be more likely to land on one side, and you can assume that the coin will land on side A, by virtue of it being biased on side A or something. Following me so far? Good. Now, say you know everything there is to know about the coin toss, and I mean, everything. Down to the subatomic level. Much like how a computer program always outputs the same values, given the same inputs, the coin will always land on one side, assuming the circumstances are exactly the same all the time. If we know everything there is to know about the coin toss, then we have effectively reduced this random event into an algorithm, an equation. A highschool physics problem, if you want to be dramatic.

So, let's expand this conclusion to the entire universe: If we know absolutely, and I mean, absolutely everything there is to know about the universe, then we can say that the universe is deterministic. I get what you're saying. Right now, we can't exactly prove this. We don't have the means. As we understand things right now, there will always be this uncertain part of the universe. But what if this was solvable? What if we unlock the secret, and everything's clear? Then randomness would cease to exist, basically.

And my second point still stands, regardless of my first. A deterministic universe still implies a lack of free will.

Oh god, I should be studying instead of this shit.

[CodexDraco]

Nice derailment. The problem with your argument is that you assume that knowing everything about the event is possible, but we don't know yet. We also don't know if knowing everything is enough to know the result of the event 100% of the time.

[Jeoshua]

We assume 1+1 always equals 2, merely because we have no example where on paper it equals anything else.  Except we do in binary, where it equals 10.  We have no examples to the contrary, but no reason to assume that it will always be so.  Math is a system, and all systems are somewhat incomplete.  There is always something that could be added to any system, and while it's possible to assert that 1+1 will always be equal to 2, it's not actually possible to actually prove that cannot be anything else.  While this argument is a bit weak in 1+1=2, we're not actually talking about anything as cut and dry as all that.  We're talking about probability, which is quite a bit hairier.

If I go to my roof and drop a ball, it will fall down.  Unless the wind picks it up and it's a light ball, in which case it may move with the wind.  Or if it's magnetized and there is a strong magnetic force acting upon it.  There are plenty of ways that the trajectory of the ball can be influenced in both large and small ways, and not all are immediately apparent.  The density of the air as the ball falls may fluctuate slightly, the ball itself may be irregular in shape.  It will fall roughly "down" in most circumstances but exactly where it falls and which part of it's surface comes into contact with the ground is incredibly chaotic.

This is my point about chaos and determinism, at it's core. One may theorize that if all variables were known exactly that the result would be deterministic.  But the fact of the matter is that in any real-world system there are so many variables and those variables change the whole situation in such a way as to make actual prediction an impossibility.

And since you've touched on it, it's impossible to know the position, velocity, charge, and potential of every single force acting upon even one particle.  The forces may be small, but in a very real sense every single other particle in the universe has an effect on every single other particle, however infinitesimal or lagged by space-time distance.  And to "know" a value, one must have some way to store that value, presumably on another particle in some fashion.  So assuming a real-world computer with real-world memory storage, which stores it's information in the same universe as the quantities being measured, every bit added to store the information adds at least one more bit of information to be stored.

[slothen]

So, let's expand this conclusion to the entire universe: If we know absolutely, and I mean, absolutely everything there is to know about the universe, then we can say that the universe is deterministic. I get what you're saying. Right now, we can't exactly prove this. We don't have the means. As we understand things right now, there will always be this uncertain part of the universe. But what if this was solvable? What if we unlock the secret, and everything's clear? Then randomness would cease to exist, basically.

This holds true for objects and actions on the order of size of a penny, but what about on the atomic or subatomic level?  In quantum mechanics the location of subatomic particles are described as probability density clouds.  I believe the point is that this is not merely a limitation in our ability to observe and predict, but that the actions of subatomic particles are truly, inherently random.  The conclusion is that the nature of the universe changes with the resolution of your microscope.  On a big scale, the universe is deterministic.   On the scale of a penny, it appears to contain randomness, but is in fact this is an illusion, the deterministic nature appears randomness because perfect measureability is impossible, experiments cannot be replicated perfectly.  This is chaos.  Only on the subatomic level is true randomness.

And my second point still stands, regardless of my first. A deterministic universe still implies a lack of free will.

  Yes, and a philosophical corollary is that human society does not require free will, it only requires the assumption that free will exists.

This is my point about chaos and determinism, at it's core. One may theorize that if all variables were known exactly that the result would be deterministic.  But the fact of the matter is that in any real-world system there are so many variables and those variables change the whole situation in such a way as to make actual prediction an impossibility.

And I believe the point of quantum mechanics is that even if every variable was existentially known, it would still not be possible to predict outcomes with certainty.  The ability to actually know the values of said variables without changing them should be irrelevant, I believe point of deterministic-chaotic vs random is about the inherent nature of the world, not the ability to carry out 'the everything calculation.'

(...)

I didn't mean to offend anyone, neither Azrael, nor 12yo's, nor people with ADHD. Just wanted to say what conclusion I got after observing a certain pattern of forum posting.
But apparently some people like taking everything personally and getting offended when there is any occasion to, not my fault.

What do you want me to say?  "sorry I called you out?" Come on.  Someone new to the community comes and makes a bunch of threads, and you compare him to the hyperactive kid we all knew in elementary school.  No one likes to be called childish or immature.  It doesn't matter if he is a child or an adult, in the context of a public forum, it is insulting.  Secondly, there is a strong stigma to ADHD because these days everyone knew "one of those kids" in school as a child.  In the context of the internet, when someone is not mentioning their ADHD voluntarily, its uniformly used negatively to describe someone drawing attention to themselves through non-conformity, generally being new or not understanding the norms of the community.  Furthermore, the "he must have ADHD" comment is 99% of the time paired with the "must be 12yo" comment, to allude to the shared memory of such a kid we once knew.  Labeling your unflattering assessment as a diagnosis or "conclusion" is asinine, because all you've done is read a few posts, which we've all done.  What does that say to other people with ADHD?  It says, "this guy is making foolish posts and knows less about the game than we do, my conclusion is that this poster is a child with ADHD."  Guess what, shitposters and newbies come from all walks of life, and it has nothing to do with age or ADHD.   At the very least, offering your opinion on someone's age, intelligence, or psychological condition is extraordinarily condescending, and you'll offend no matter how much you say "no offense."

I resent your assertion that I'm one of those people that enjoys taking things personally.  By saying so you rule out the possibility that you may have said something genuinely offensive, and presuppose that I am unreasonably taking issue with your statement.  You knew what you said could be interpreted as offensive, otherwise you wouldn't have said "no offense."  Accept that you were perpetuating a ridiculous stigma about ADHD.

I'd apologize for derailing the thread, but this thread's original purpose was answered long ago.

[Thief^]

We assume 1+1 always equals 2, merely because we have no example where on paper it equals anything else.  Except we do in binary, where it equals 10.

That's because that's the same number, but represented differently.

Did you know, that by convention the base of a number is written in base ten, because if it was written in the numbers own base you'd always write "base 10"?

[Finn]

From the amount of his threads, quality of their content and grammar of his sentences I suspect he is 10-12yo with ADHD (no offense meant). Of course I can't be sure but there is high probability I am right.

Of course there is.  Pop-psychological diagnosis of disorder based on pattern of forum posts.  How could it be wrong?