Independent Action

Radioactive decay is thought to be random; i.e., uncaused. Acts of free will, if any, would presumably be uncaused. Alas, I know of no discipline of metaphysical engineering that gives much of a handle on this. Nor any other discipline.

Ok, talk gears. Not meshed.

Take a nice big gear (say like a ring gear for starting an engine) and mount it so it has a horizontal axis. Say it has 100 teeth. Spin it up to 6000rpm. Take a steel ball about 6mm diameter and hold it about 100mm above the periphery of the spinning gear. Release it - NOT YET - not 'til I say "now" ...... "Now!".

Can you imagine for a minute that the trajectory of the ball is predictable?

Now imagine millions upon millions of similar events happening every microsecond, just in one tiny drop of water or cubic millimeter of air.

The example I gave is, by the way, far more predictable than say dropping the same ball into a cloud of countless billions of such balls, each rattling aroung with it's own speed and direction.

Ok, lets take a Really Big Gear: A gear with a very large prime number of teeth on it.This gear is driven by another gear with the next lower prime number of teeth on it.Keep adding gears until the first gear takes 300 million years to rotate once, the first being the one with the largest radius.Now look at the gear in the gear train that takes one year to rotate.An average lifetime is 70 revolutions.It will take a very long time before the same teeth mesh more than once on the two largest gears.Yet every tooth counts and has an effect on the final output.

How many times before an event repeats itself?

To be scientifically valid, the results must be repeatable and verifiable, so we cannot possibly live long enough to verify the repetition.Therefor we say it is random.

Got no problem with that - supports what I'm trying to say nicely.

_{^{BUT Who the hellck are you?}}

A post script to 15:

We call it "random" but on a larger scale it is not really random.Everything is connected. See the point?

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Emily Dickinson

It appears to support his theory also, with everything being connected, albeit on a large scale.

What you're asking is the question that all philosophy has been trying to answer since the beginning of time! I suggest you take a philosophy class and see what you come up with.

Also, you might be interested in quantum physics, where effects don't always have causes.

As for me, do I believe in free will? Yes, I have no choice.

This brings up some of the thorniest problems in all of human thought, both scientific and philosophical. C.S. Lewis, in his book "Miracles: A Preliminary Study", examines these questions rigorously, though from a distinctly Christian viewpoint. It is worth reading, even for the atheist. I shall try to convey the basic ideas without butchering them nor laying to heavy a Christian slant on them.

In the realms of physics and chemistry, cause and effect rules. However mind, that is reason, is something else again. Where instinct can be fairly easily demonstrated as having arisen from cause and effect, reason seems to be a different thing entirely. Where instinct says if A, then B, reason says if A, maybe B, and possibly C. Reason infers, intuits, imagines, things that instinct simply cannot do. Thus, the mind is able to come up with new things, completely independent of cause and effect.

As for your second question, this may be summed up as "Why is there something instead of nothing?", and this is certainly a profound question. Modern cosmology favors the Big Bang, but even this begs the question, what caused the bang in the first place? It appears that there is required an un-caused first cause, something outside of the phenomenological framework of our own universe. As to what this first cause is, there are many hypotheses, none of which at this point can be proved scientifically.

On a very basic(molecular, quantum,etc.) you have merely proven my point.Synapses are caused/causal events themselves, being chemical and electrical in nature.

Random, to me, simply means too complicated for man to analyse with present abilities or technologies.A busy city street viewed from high above appears random, and so does an ant hill, yet every ant or person has a definite deistination or purpose in mind.

With sufficient analyses, the bouncing steel ball on the flywheel could be analysed.At present time, it may be beyond our ability, but remember, the ball is merely responding to forces imparted to it by other forces.Action/reaction.

Your first two paragraphs are logically (and philosophically) false...

You can prove nothing by analogy. Just because in those instances you (or man) cannot deal with the complexity, does not mean that that argument is relevant for all other situations.

The rather beautiful thing about quantum physics is that it "may" actually rely on no causality. Consider the concept of superposition... A particle or atom can be in multiple energy states at the same time. This has been observed for years, and has technological application in the Real World.

I will not argue that at first blush, what you say about me being wrong is right.But a deeper analysis reveals what is not apparent:

A CRT televison monitor appears to have a whole picture on it, but in reality, it is a large group of phosphors being illuminated one at the time by an electron beam.If the beam is moving fast enough, it can appear to be in more than one place at the same time.Suppose space time is really scanning at a very high rate, a rate which we cannot detect at macro levels.Only at quantum levels does this scanning become apparent, like looking at a newspaper phot thru a magnifying glass.The pixels become apparent.

I predict that someday, they will discover the "STEL" (Space Time Elements).

Perhaps it will show up as an inexplicable noise in the background.

It is possible to give the illusion of 3 dimensions using only two real dimensions; consider the holographic image on your credit card as an example.

Perhaps we are really only 2 dimensional. I know I'm crazy, but at least I know it, and I am in good company.

I could take the reciprical of your argument, and state that for the same reasons you gave, the argument is not nescessarily invalid for all other situations.

Can you argue with Newton:"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction"?

Or do the rules only apply as long as you can make sense of them?

If Quantum mechanics disagrees with Newton, you discard or modify Newton.

If there are two sets of rules for reality, perhaps there are many more.Modified gravity for instance.Variable light speed? Why not.Oh, I see, that would disagree with Einstein, and he has not been wrong yet.YET!

Perhaps another anlogy would help, or maybe not.It is very hard to entertain a thought or idea that disagrees with our preconceived notions, unless we have a truly open mind.

I have no ego equity in my ideas,and will willingly give them up for a better one, feeling not the least bit ashamed or embarrassed to be proven wrong, but rather glad for the enlightenment.

Oh yes, Einstein also said "Reality is an illusion, but a very convincing one."

Maybe I am not too far off after all.

When you talk about "No Causality", you are talking "MAGIC".

" When something happens that you don't understand, the Wizard did it" _-Homer Simpson

So you believe in magic, Newton be damned? Einstein too? Or do you simply accept blindly that which is generally accepted at large?.

You are a rule follower.No harm in that.But not much true progress either.I am not saying we don't need rules, that would be a narrow interpretation of what I am trying to impart to you.

For many years the Brontosaurus had the wrong head on the skeleton in the museum.Generations of people thought that was what a Brontosaurus looked like.They went to their graves wrong.Why? Because a famous well respected scientist said so, and no one dared to challenge him.

To find the truth sometimes requires treason against the established scientific or religious establishment to get to the truth.

People were once executed for saying that the Earth was not the center of the universe, then it was the Milky Way at the center of the universe,then Hubble came along, and lo and behold, there are billions of galaxy clusters, with billions of stars in each galaxy, and we are a non remarkable sprial galaxy, in a non remarkable group, inhabiting a tiny little dust speck in a sunbeam of a relatively small yellow star.

And yet we fight over our share of this little dust mote.

Not only are we small,we are getting proportionally smaller every day, as the universe expands.

One thing to remember, when scientists discover something new:They merely discovered it, they did not create it.And we delight in our discovery of some mechanism of the universe,and we stroke our egos, and pat each other on the back, and immortalize the names of the really great explorers of the unknown.And don't get me wrong, discoveries are important, without which there would be no progress. But the things that we discover were at work billions of years before us, and do not need us to validate their existence.The universe is not in a state of superposition.If it is, then where was it before mankind appeared? Does it require a sentient species to acknowledge it to exist? Or must it be "THE MAN-CREATURE".

Think about it.

It's obvious that your education is somewhat limited and you have sort of a "conspiracy/anti-establishment" tone to your nature. I'm guessing you're one of those laymen whose reading has led them far ahead of their education, which results in unstructured thinking.

Also, remember that when the brontosaurs was discredited, it was a dedicated and educated paleontologist that figured it out, and not a skeptical member of the scientific laity.

You think about it.

You have the right to your opinion.You have the right to try to avoid the problem of providing a valid argument by a feeble attempt to denigrate my education or reasoning ability.

The head on the Brontosaurus was questioned by many, but only privately and not publicly.They lacked the courage to challenge the establishment.I took a rebel to do it. But even then it was many years after the fact.

Another example of a brontosaur-ism is the Sphinx.A very well educated and intelligent geologist examined the erosion on it and took pictures.He studied them at length, but could not escape the conclusion that water was responsible for the erosion pattern, not wind..He knew there had not been any water in the area for ten thousand years, and Egyptian History only goes back 5000 years.He edited out the head, and sent the resulting photos to his professor, who reached the same conclusion:definitely water erosion, not wind erosion.

He then sent the whole photograph to the professor.His reaction was ,(And I paraphrase here): "Oh, no.You're not going to drag me into that argument. Civilizations do not disappear without a trace.No trace of any civilization older than 5000 years has ever been found in the area."

What happened to the open minded scientist?

The one that seeks the true facts?

Perhaps they are extinct.Almost.

Abraham Lincoln said:"It ain't what a man doesn't know that makes him ignorant.It is what he knows that just ain't so."

In addition to the aforementioned rights, you also have the right to remain ignorant.

That is such old, tired crap. I thought everyone got past all your bolngna in the 70's! Don't tell me... Your spritual and intellectual leader is George Norry on Coast to Coast.

The Bronto-isms linger still.......

Calling it old does nothing to dilute the validity.

Look how long the Catholic Church held reign over discovery.

It took generations before a "goat" was born to oppose it and allow the light of knowledge to enter.

I cannot resist the urge to open a new(old) can of worms.

The quarry where the blocks for the pyramids was mined is a sedimentary structure, with layers of seashells imbedded into it, and non-uniformity throughout.

The blocks of the pyramids, however are homogeneous, except for the seashells, which are uniformy distributed, like aggregate in concrete.Please explain this if you can.

Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that in spite of my unstructured thinking, I know how to spell bologna.

I could stoop to your level, but I had rather use your rope and let you hang yourself.

I expect you will abandon this thread because you have nothing useful to say, and will sulk in silence, or alternatively, launch a sophomoric tirade against a tide of non-contemperaneous contrary information.

Who am I you ask? Does it matter.I could be Snoopy the dog, and would you be any better informed? IF you must direct your anger at a target, aim it in the mirror.

Nah! Actually Timothy Leary.I must have O D'd on Acid,meth or pot.Right?

Can a future event influence a present event?

Can a present event influence a past event?

(There is scientific evidence to support this illogical claim, but no more illogical than a quantum computer solving a problem before it is even activated.Do your homework, and you will see.)

If a thing or event must be observed to assume a fixed state, then it begs the questions:

Observed by whom or what? Must the observer be a sentient being? At what level of intelligence? Is an object as real to a blind person as it it to a sighted one? Or does reality exist individually within our own minds?

Or do you mean observed in the broadest sense,as in "aware"? Does reality dissappear when you close your eyes? Who observed the big bang? You cannot cop out by saying this only applies to the quantum world, for of such is everything made.A workable TOE has not united these disparities, among many others, and I look forward to the day they do.

Logic and Philosophy need not apply in the Quantum World.

Check out this link:

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Easy+answers:+quantum+computer+gives+results+without+running-a0143249029

"With sufficient analyses, the bouncing steel ball on the flywheel could be analysed ..."

The trajectory of the ball would depend on:

• The position of the ball with respect to the particular tooth it struck
• The height from which it was dropped, and the local value of the acceleration due to gravity
• The uniformity of the gear teeth
• The rotational velocity of the toothed wheel
• The speed of rebound (dependent on the physical properties of the materials of both the ball and the toothed wheel)

.. and there are many others that I can't be arsed to list. Each of these would have to be known to an arbitrary degree of precision and accuracy (depending on how well you are going to say that you could "analyse" the system).

If you think that the path of the ball could be predicted on the macroscopic level (never mind the microscopic - or dare I say the quantum - level), I suggest you think again.

Ok, let me try another tact, though I fear that it will fall on a closed mind.

A cloud passes overhead.It is being driven by the wind.It is fairly easy to predict the position of the cloud in say, 2 seconds from now.Perhaps even a minute or two.

Meanwhile, inside the cloud, the individual molecules of water are dancing around each other and bouncing off of each other in a seemingly random pattern.Seemingly random because it is too complex to analyse.

If you wish to define random as too hard or complex to analyse, I can accept that.But if you wish to define random as motion or events that have no previous impetus from another event or action, then that is where our definitions diverge.And ne'er the twain shall meet, but that is ok. I never learned anything from arguing with someone that always agreed with me.

Let me rephrase my thought :We(Man) cannot predict the trajectory of the bouncing ball, but it nonetheless is responding to variables,which are in turn influenced by other variables, etc.,etc., ad naseum.IF (and that is a very big word) we knew all of the variables it would likely take many lifetimes to analyse the data presented to us.Because of this, we put it under the convenient title of "RANDOM",which, in effect means:Too complicated or complex to deal with.

Which goes back to my first statement.

Of course, this is just my opinion, I could be wrong.

And you know what they say about opinions.

On the quantum level, it either bounces or not, or both at the same time.And it has to have an observer to do either.Until observed, it is in a superposition.And what you see is what you get.

You say when the brontosaurs was discredited, it was done by a dedicated palentologist,and that point I will not argue.The point, however, is that for many years people were led down the wrong path with misinformation created by a fear of the established discipline.It took a lot of courage to do what he did. I may appear to have a anti-establishment attitude, and that is true in one regard:I consider,evaluate,analyse and ultimately question all facts in order to establish my own opinion.You may call it unstructured thinking, but I call it thinking outside of the box.There are plenty of brontosaurs out there still.The original was misrepresented because a complete skeleton had never been found.There are many more things that have their head on wrong. I am sure you consider me one of them,but that is ok by me. One cannot help the courage of his convictions, or the lack thereof.I cannot be offended by anyone if I do not allow it.Sure, I may be a pragmatist, which simply means an ass---- to some, but that is the price one pays for being a goat instead of a sheep.

Being a goat is not always desirable.

signed

A Different Guest from all the Others
(identification purely for JDG's benefit)

A metaphor, my friend, a metaphor.Perhaps I should have used a simile instead.

Sheep blindly follow where others lead.

Reference the Bible text in this regard to better interpret my meaning.The independent nature of the goat is to what I refer, not the cruel uncaring goat of the Bible. Hope this clears it up.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." -- Mark Twain