Timeline for What is the difference between free-will and randomness and or non-determinism?
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11 events
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| Mar 27 at 10:33 | comment | added | TKoL | @stoicfury hello from 10 years in the future. In programming, if you wanted to implement a coin that lands head 90% of the time, you would use randomness to do that - you would, perhaps, generate a random float between 0 and 1, and make it 'heads' if it's anywhere from 0 - 0.9, and make it 'tails' if it's >.9. The implementation of these "probabilistic" type concepts is still via randomness, which is why a lot of people intuitively agree with James Kingsbery calling it 'random' - in implementation, it really is. | |
| Apr 24, 2014 at 19:56 | comment | added | stoicfury | I guess we define "randomness" differently then. To me, if the odds of a coin landing heads is 90%, then I wouldn't call the outcome "random"; I would say it is very predictable. This is because my definition of "randomness" (and I think most people's) is all about predictability on an aggregate level. If the outcome is at all predictable (even if not 100% of the time), it is not random to me. Under your definition — i.e. on a micro-scale (every event looked at independently, not on a distribution) — every event is random, which would wholly dilute the meaning of the word. | |
| Apr 24, 2014 at 19:36 | comment | added | James Kingsbery | What I was getting at is that, in probability theory a Random variable doesn't need a uniform distribution. The "weighted coin" is a common analogy used in probability for an unfair coin. Such a coin is still random even if there's a 90% chance of landing on the head side. | |
| Apr 24, 2014 at 19:23 | comment | added | stoicfury | @JamesKingsbery - I am sure we agree with each other; few things in this universe can be shown to be exactly equal to something else. I just mean that in the general sense of randomness ("General Usage" column) people treat coin flips as if they are totally fair, that the chance of either outcome is equal, that the chance for heads or tails is 50/50. Strictly speaking (as you describe) they are not, but functionally they are for us. | |
| Apr 24, 2014 at 17:09 | comment | added | James Kingsbery | Mostly agree. I would drop the "equally probable" part. As an example, a weighted coin would be random but not where each output is equally probable. Another example from quantum mechanics is that a qubit in a mixed state could have a 75% chance of resolving to one of two states when measured. In no useful sense are these things "non-random." | |
| Oct 28, 2011 at 1:21 | history | edited | stoicfury | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
fixed formatting
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| Oct 28, 2011 at 1:18 | comment | added | stoicfury | Yeah it's a fairly convoluted topic, for sure. I suppose you are correct though, that such a coin toss as you describe would be considered "random" in a general sense (after all, my definition is listed under "General Usage"). But in a strict sense I think it's needed, although I'm not sure it would yet be enough to strictly define "random" (which is why I wrote "strictly undefined"). The very concept of a "strict" definition of "random" is paradoxical to me... :P | |
| Oct 25, 2011 at 7:01 | comment | added | DuckMaestro | thanks for the comment back with your reasoning. I suppose relevant to this context the definition could swing either way. Coming from a formal mathematics background (its formalizations not always useful or applicable in philosophy, granted), I felt as written "equally probable" could be distracting. To counter your last argument, I'd say, well, an unfair coin will have a non-uniform distribution yet the outcome is still random; but then it occurred to me that an unfair coin is perhaps characterizable as "deterministic (to some degree)". Perhaps this is your point. :) | |
| Oct 25, 2011 at 5:35 | comment | added | stoicfury | @DuckMaestro: I would argue that randomness as defined above with "such that any outcome is equally probable" is necessary for the definition to remain valid. Any event in which the potential outcome is biased in favor of a particular event or set of events—even if not wholly fixed—is not truly random (it becomes pseudo-random). | |
| Oct 25, 2011 at 5:08 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Oct 25, 2011 at 5:29 | |||||
| Aug 11, 2011 at 3:24 | history | answered | stoicfury | CC BY-SA 3.0 |