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Politics : Should God be replaced?
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To: E who wrote (2929)10/30/2000 12:21:44 AM
From: TigerPaw  Read Replies (1) of 28931
 
where does the randomness come from?
I don't know. You see the whole concept of random is that it is completely unpredictable,not because it is too complex (that is chaos), but because it does not actually have a value until the action happens.

For something to be completely unknowable it really can't have a cause, otherwise the cause itself would lead to predictions. Even the tiniest amount of randomness over time makes for a completely random future (although the part of the future nearer in time has greater statistical stability than the future farther out in time).

If the universe is not random then all of the events were contained in the previous universe (whatever that is). A random universe does not require that the information be carried from one big bang to the next (or through one God's thoughts to his son or something).

Does that mean that the reason for the randomness is because an atom is just spinning around any which way, and that kind of... nudges bigger stuff around a bit?

This is a pretty good description of the phenomina known as chaos (which is a precise scientific term not to be confused with the general meaning of disorder). Chaos amplifies the effects of random changes. The randomness of quantum mechanics does happen at the smallest level of particles, but it happens a tiny bit to all particles and so ultimately affects all things from quarks to galaxies.
TP
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