On randomness and pseudo-randomness

שו”ת › Category: philosophy › On randomness and pseudo-randomness

asked 9 years ago

peace
I’ll say in advance that my question may stem from a lack of prior knowledge.
If the assumption is correct that the only thing in the universe that has a choice is man (and this is also debatable), then everything that happens in matter that is not man’s choice is apparently bound to happen (the principle of causality), and even if we don’t know all the exact reasons for everything, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. For example, a cube that is thrown and each time falls on a different side, then it is clear that if I could map all the data of the weight, the force of gravity, and the motion of the throw, I could predict which side it will fall on. Therefore, the apparent randomness that appears to us is merely an illusion and an optical error. (I once read that quantum mechanics has randomness. I have no idea about physics. But it must be unusual. And it is also not clear to me philosophically how randomness belongs. By the way, the same problem also applies to man’s choice.)
So we can say that after the laws of nature were created, essentially everything had to happen and could not be otherwise (at least everything that is not related to human choices), and perhaps this is a new interpretation of the concept of “everything is in the hands of Heaven” and “there is no coincidence in the world” because after God created the laws of nature, everything is predictable in advance.
Is this true?
Thanks in advance.

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מיכי Staff answered 9 years ago

Hello generation. This is not accurate, because human actions affect the still nature around them. But processes that do not involve human choice are indeed deterministic. If you know the circumstances at the beginning, you will know what will happen at the next moment. The only exception is in microscopic reality where quantum theory describes a different behavior, which on its face does not appear deterministic (although there is still some debate about the interpretation of this theory). But this only happens on very small scales (= a few atoms or particles) and has no effect on large scales, such as tossing a die or a coin. Regarding the relationship between random choice and determinism (these are three different mechanisms, and you are probably confusing choice with randomness), you can see in my books on the science of freedom that I devote a lot to explaining this distinction and its implications. —————————————————————————————— Asks: So would it be correct to say that until the appearance of Homo sapiens everything was deterministic, and in any case there is no randomness in the theory of evolution? —————————————————————————————— Rabbi: Indeed, that’s true. You’ve caught what many biologists and evolutionists don’t understand here. At the level of animals and the scales relevant to their discussion, there’s probably nothing random (because quantum theory doesn’t deal with such scales). The “randomness” in question is similar to the randomness of rolling a die. It’s a completely deterministic process, except that for mathematical purposes it’s more convenient for us to see it as random and use probabilistic and statistical tools to deal with it. I have elaborated on this matter in my book God Plays Dice. I also defined this type of randomness in Book 12 of the Talmudic Logic series as pseudo-randomness (see also halachic examples from the issue of Pesik Risha and more).

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