http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/hey-wait-minute/2009/07/28/flipping-out?page=0,0&g=1

http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/hey-wait-minute/2009/07/28/flipping-out?page=0,0&g=1

http://www.thesmallpenis.com/artfulcliques/he-wait-for-ever/2009/09/37/filipping-out?page=23,0&g=infinity

I wonder how many other things we may find are not actually random . .

This has to be one of the most bogus pieces of "research" I've ever seen. And I'm not surprised at all that it was done by statisticians and economists.

To begin with, their experiment requires that the coin always begin the toss with the same face up. They are also assuming that the tossing "mechanism" is extremely consistent, even to the point of using a mechanical tossing machine.

So they've already removed two sources of 'randomness' right there. Remove enough 'randomness' from the process and it can be made 100% predicable and non-random.

For example, allow me to set up a mind experiment right now. Imagine a mechanical "coin-tosser" that is so simple and lame that all it can do is flip a coin over. Now I'm going to demand that coins always be placed into this "coin-tosser" face up. My prediction is that ever toss will come out to be tails 100% of the time.

Anyone up to betting against me at my table?

Clearly randomness can indeed be taken 'out' of macro systems. Take out enough opportunity for randomness and we'll never see randomness.

This is another place where it's good to have a deep understanding of the difference between macro objects and quantum objects. Quantum objects are necessarily random by their very nature. Macro objects have restricted randomness by their very nature. Understanding precisely why this difference exists is the key to understanding what the opportunities are for macro objects to exhibit random behavior.

This is actually fully understood and explained quite well in the Teaching Company course on Quantum Mechanics.

The conclusions from this article are totally bogus. Their "limitation" of randomness by placing stringent conditions on a toss does not imply what they are claiming it implies. It's a totally bogus claim.

Moreover, they have to be totally blind to believe that the stock market represent randomness. Clearly it does not. The stock market represents trends of social economies and is affected by many factors of social enterprise including weather, crop failures, rock star successes, etc. It's not random at all. If the entire economy falls apart due to banks loaning far too much money to people who can't afford to pay it back then the stock market crashes. There was nothing random about that at all. It was do to stupid decisions and greedy actions taken by banking institutions.

Why these people are even considering the Stock Market to be drive by 'randomness' is beyond me. Clearly, it can appear that way on occasion.

For example, if the bankers are doing their job and the economy is 'stable' overall from an enterprise point of view, then the only factors affecting the Stock Market do indeed arise from truly random sources, (i.e. Weather conditions, Crop Failures (or not), Wars (or not), Rock Stars becoming famous (or not), Movies becoming hits (or not), Products in general becoming fads (or not). Those are all random events. So when the economy is going along fairly 'stable' it's slight ups and downs are just random waves on the surface of that stable ocean of economy.

Clearly the ocean itself is not random. When the Stock Market crashes it's usually for a reason. Like our current crash being due to banks lending way too much money to people who couldn't afford that kind of financial burden. The reason it crashed in this case was just from poor management and greed. Nothing random about that at all.

For these people to come out and claim that a dice toss is not as random as we originally thought is utterly absurd. Especially considering the extremely restricted conditions that they are placing on their coin tosses.

This article is just very poor and bogus information. That's all it amounts to. Anyone who takes this article seriously on a philosophical level has been grossly misled.

And by the way. I really don't care. I'm just pointing out the flaws in this particular article for anyone who might be interested. Like I say, put enough restrictions on a so-called "coin toss" and you can force the outcome to be 100% predictable just like I described in this post.

We can indeed force macro objects to behave without any quantum randomness. All we need to do is restrict them in a way that restricts them so severely so that any quantum effects to enter into the picture.

In fact, we do this all the time with all technologies. Our very computers would not work if we could not build them in a way where they can operate dependably without random quantum effects wrecking havoc with them. We can do the same thing with coin tosses. But only under very restricted conditions.

Restrict the conditions enough and you can predict the outcome 100% of the time.

Coins are macro objects.

Was this research money well spent?!

Why appeal to QM at all abra? Is it just your only example of true randomness? Just curious. BTW I agree coin tosses regardless of the mechanics used are not random. I knew that regardless of this study, as does (one would hope) every first year mechanics student.

Now your going to make me actually read the study . . . drats

Depends on who paid for it and what there motivation was . . .

The actual research is here:
http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~susan/papers/headswithJ.pdf
I tend to prefer to read that for details then an article written by a journalist who may very well not understand the details.


The Abstract:

That Coin is Voodoo! I did the flip and it landed on OKLAHOMA! AND THAT IS THE TRUTH!

And 9 yrs later i am still here!... Don't trust it.. it will miss lead you...

I want to know the name of that man who did the study! I am going to find him, then super glue ever two head coin to his body!

then find me a tic tac and enjoy myself for the rest of the night!

HAHAHAH

Absolutely. It's the only example of true randomness.

At least from a purely physical empirical view.

In a pure "Newtonian world" true randomness could not occur, by the very definition and postulates of that physics.

QM is absolutely required for true randomness to be intoduced into the physical world. At least from a pure standpoint of physics as laws of the universe.

In short, there were no laws within the Newtonian framework that would permit true randomness from arising.

Quantum Mechanics actually provides two very separate and distinct mechanisms for randomness to arise.

One mechanism comes directly from quantum complementarity and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which is indeed a mathematical statement of the natural property of "uncertainty" of quantum quantitative relationships.

The other mechanism that comes from QM is the simply fact that it does indeed represent a physics that is based on 'quanta'. (limiting quantities of least action). This was another thing that was missing from the Newtonian Classical Physics. In fact, this aspect of QM has not received nearly the attention it deserves. Nor has it even yet been fully appreciated even by the scientific community themselves.

The quantum of action (Planck's Constants) of energy/mass, movement (distance or length), velocity/position/momentum, and even of time itself, provide the random seeds for unpredicable 'butterfly effects' that can also provide a perfectly valid source of randomness.

So it's not just the obvious mechanism of quantum complementarity at work, the very fact that the universe is based on 'quanta' itself provides a mechanism for randomness.

Even Newtonian Mechanics was based on the idea that everything in the universe can be reduced non-stop as a continuum. That turns out not to be true. Planck's constants, and QM itself shows that this is not the case. After reaching a certain level of division things take on the property of Quantum complementarity. The Heisenberg Uncertainty relationships hold true and the quantum affects step in to produce randomness.

Even today our modern mathematics still holds that the very concept of number (ideas of quantity even for things like distance) can be infintely small, and the number line is a 'continuum'.

That idea is WRONG.

QM shows HOW it is wrong.

Zeno of Elea (an ancient Greek Philosopher) showed WHY it is wrong on a purely intellectual level using nothing more than pure logic.

Zeno saw that if the world was truly a continuum movement would not be possible. But we can obviously move. Therefore Zeno saw that the true nature of the world could not be a continuum but must instead be based on 'quanta'.

Zeno saw QM coming over 2000 years ago!

Zeno was RIGHT!

Mathematicians are still wrong today. They claim that Calculus solves Zeno's paradoxes. It most certainly does NOT.

Just look at the Wierstrass definition for the Calculus limit, and look at want Zeno had to say, and it's clear that the Calculus Limit does NOT solve Zeno's paradoxes.

But QM does. QM solved Zeno's paradoxes by showing that Zeno was RIGHT! We don't live in a continuum, we live in a quantized universe based on quantas of action. Quantas of actions that behave according to quantum complementarity.

Yes, Jeremy, you are absolutely correct. I'm saying that all true randomness does indeed arise from the fact that we live in a universe that is based on 'quanta' and not on a 'continuum'.

That's right.

If QM were not true then Newtonian determinism would probably be true and there would be no room for randomness in this universe.

Newtonian Physics was bound to fall. And it did fall.

It was simple wrong at the core level of it's starting premises.

But like Slowhand points out, F=ma still holds pretty darn good, especially on the macro level.

So yes, I am indeed saying that all randomness arises from the fact that we live in a universe that is based on quanta rather than on a continuum.

I personally don't even see how a universe based on a continuum could even exist. Like Zeno had shown, even motion would be impossible in such a universe.

I couldn't agree more, but I see the fundamental problem is with mathematics and the definitions being based on formal yet ideal structures and then how we label things based on these ideal structures. I can only ever be an approximation.

Random as applied to any physical phenomena is an arbitrary designation. Random can only be applied properly to a mathematical statement. I mean sure we can say that a series of numbers has a certain confidence level of being random, but that confidence can never reach 100%.

So I find no surprise in hearing about studies like this one. In fact I find this to merely be an exercise in explaining why physical systems MUST be deterministic, its only in the inconsistencies that we see random like behavior.

So I find it rather pointless to say this research is flawed when its conclusion matches, and its methodology is the only methodology you could use to account for those very inconsistencies which could confuse the results.

Inconsistency does not = Random.
Unknown variables does not = Random.
To isolate inconsistencies, and to isolate unknown variables is to eliminate the potential for randomness in a mechanical system.

There fore randomness can only exist with uncertainty of the kind introduced by Heisenberg. But then its an act of faith.

IMHO random is a bit like the idealized concept of free will, it just does not exist in nature, the kind that does exist is far more determinable then we are comfortable with in many cases, and where it really lives we can only speculate about its true randomness, we can only ever take samples match against the mean and say yup very close to asymptote, I accept that as random (arbitrary)


Oh I agree!

And I think we get the same thing out of the exercise. Mathematical labels do not necessarily apply to reality directly or uniformly.

I also think this is the point where we disagree and its more on label then on phenomena. I do not label this universe random just becuase its most reduced aspects behave that way. I label this universe deterministic because the majority of phenomena behave that way.

You might find the following thread interesting.
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=6814

What about the randomness of two separate closed systems interacting.

The fact that they interact is independently determined by each individual system, but - because they had no shared cause - the interaction itself is a random event, is it not?

No single cause effected both systems prior to the interaction in a determining way which resulted in the interaction.



That is why I am not a fatalist(strict determinist).

I can't believe this article is news to anyone - aren't they just asserting that the initial conditions determine result, and that under special circumstances, a deliberate choice of specific initial conditions can guarantee a specific result? I mean, they built a machine to do these coin tosses.

I used to flip silver dollars the way I wanted them to flip when I was a kid. You just have to practice a lot, always start with the same side up, always grab it out of the air the same way, and not let it rotate too many times.

I seem to recall that if you flip a block, though, one whose three orthogonal measurements are sufficiently different from each other, that nonlinear dynamics will definitely enter the picture, creating chaotic (from the mathematical point of view) movement in the block - and a 'random' (unpredictable) final state for the block.... could be mis-remembering.

Okay, I read the article about the research, not the researchers writing (so it looks like my previous comment may be irrelevant)... thanks for posting the abstract Bushido!