Kian wrote:
Darned Firefox, updated itself and opened a pop up asking if I wanted to restart it and took my pressing the spacebar while I wrote as a yes. I had such a nice reply written too.
Anyway, three things:
You can predict the outcome of an election without knowing the number of votes each candidate gets. That's what I meant by something being predictable not meaning that it necessarily is deterministic. It really depends on how you define predicting.
Second, IF nothing were random, you'd be right. We don't know that nothing is random. So far, quantum mechanics is probabilistic, which means there are rules, but resuts are seemingly random for individual events. Perhaps in the future we might find another set of rules that explains, deterministically, why this is so. Or the universe may, at it most basic, be random.
Third, lets assume nothing were random. As you said, predictability requires information. However, the uncertainty principle limits the amount of information you can get. And worse, aquiring information requires observing something, and the act of observation alters the subject. You might get information about something, but then you'd need to know how your observation altered it to have more complete information. To know your own effect, however, you'd need to know the original value. Which is impossible to know, since you observed it to find it out in the first place.
EDIT: Forgot to add the conclusion, silly me.
By which we arrive to the conclusion that not everything is predictable. And going by your reasoning that if everything is predictable then it is deterministic, then we can not be certain that everything is deterministic, even if nothing were random, anyway.
Ah, but we're not talking about simple human ways of observation, we're talking about
omni-sentience. Assuming there
is a figure similar to how we view a monotheistic deity (being all-seeing and all-knowing), then that being could observe things and KNOW how the observation affected them. Determinism is not that we, as sentient beings, can determine all things to come from all things that happened. Rather, if we take into account that God can, in fact, observe things without affecting them, or affecting them in ways that he knows will happen, then He can indeed determine the One Possible Future from the One and Only Past.
Keep in mind that We Are Not God. If We Were God, then we wouldn't be having this discussion.
We may not be able to determine it, but it is deterministic.
Also, nothing is random. Ever. Everything has a pattern that is predictable if you know enough and observe enough.
Oh, and I recently posted my Keno comment on another board and someone mentioned gambler's fallacy. Please keep in mind that that has nothing to do with anything.