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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (2926)	10/29/2000 9:34:49 PM
From: E	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 28931

cosmicforce and tiger, this is philosophically so interesting to me: <<it really means that part of the effect in a cause-effect relationship is unknowable and well, random, >> Is the degree of it measurable? I mean... where does the randomness come from? I know these must seem comically simple minded questions to somebody who understands the principles at work, but be patient, please: What ARE the principles at work? Are they mathematical? Philosophical? Are those principles themselves knowable? Can they be shown at work in a computer program (a really vast one, I guess)? What causes the "bit of random change" that enters the "every action leads to a reaction plus a bit of random change"? Can anything else be said about the change other than that it has occurred randomly? I mean, can anything be said about the nature of the bit of change? Is it predictable that the bit of change will take place but not predictable what the nature or size of that change will be? Is it theoretically predictable, or would it be if it hadn't already been defined as "random"? Do we mean the same as "haphazard"? If there is a small but unknowable amount of haphazardness in every reaction, why doesn't the fact that it's haphazard open the possibility that the change could be bigger than a bit sometimes, and large other times? I learned from Google that QM stands for quantum mechanics. And then got the belated bright idea of looking up quantum mechanics in the dictionary, where I learned that it applies to the behavior of atoms and particles: <<quantum mechanics n : an extension of statistical mechanics based on quantum theory (especially the Pauli exclusion principle); applies to the behavior of atoms and particles >> 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?