Randomness Doesn’t Exist, Part 2
(By: Peebrain)
This is a continuation of ideas from my last post on randomness…
Let’s assume you look at someone winning the lottery twice, and you have the same reaction that I do: there’s no way our current model correctly predicts it happening. Now I notice a lot of people in the previous post don’t have that reaction 
. I’ll attempt to address people’s complaints, but also move along at the same time.
There are a few problems that spring up if we say that randomness doesn’t exist. The idea of randomness is essential to the field of probability and statistics. It’s also essential to Quantum Physics, where matter phases out into a “probability-cloud” that acts as a wave-form when not being observed. Mad Hatter made the observation that if randomness doesn’t exist, then reality is deterministic – and we have no free will.
There is a solution to these problems though. What if, where we perceive randomness, what actually exists is a conscious choice?
Probability and statistics are still useful. They just model choice instead of random behavior. Quantum Physics is still correct – but it just means that when matter phases out of existence, it just hasn’t chosen where to exist yet. And free will still exists, because everything is now free will!
So my current understanding is that, where we perceive randomness, what we’re really perceiving is a choice that we don’t understand completely.
Think of a hypothetical situation: imagine that I’m paralyzed, and all I can control is my blinking. Now imagine that you come to see me, and you are absolutely convinced that I’m a machine. You believe you are looking at a complicated clock. Perhaps I try to communicate with you by blinking letters of the alphabet… maybe using morse code. I painstakingly spell out “Hey Jimmy, how’s the wife and kids?” What do you perceive?
You will see me blinking, but you’ll think it’s just random movement. You can watch my blinking, and figure out the “probability” that I’ll blink or not. You might declare that “This machine has a 0.476 chance of blinking at any given second” – and that might true. But because of your belief that my blinking is inherently random, you miss the message.
A strange analogy… but that’s what I think is happening. We witness seemingly random events, and sure – we can calculate the odds of that event happening, and we can study it, and analyze it, and make great models. But so long as we believe that the event itself is inherently random – we are stuck. If randomness exists, then that means events are meaningless.
If we replace the idea of randomness with conscious choice, then everything has meaning. Things fall into place.
Perhaps you disagree with me . Or perhaps you think it’s interesting, but haven’t made up your mind. Either way, that’s fine. This is only my current understanding – there’s a good chance the more I think about it, the more this will change as well .
“God does not play dice with the universe.” – Albert Einstein