I mean everything happens because something caused it. For example, a kid hits a baseball from his backyard. Nearly misses my head and hits an elderly lady's car. This in turn causes the alarm to go off with me beside it. The lady proceeds to defend her car from me with an umbrella. So me running from an old lady must look pretty random considering i'm a large guy. I know random is highly unlikly chance of something, but others say it's something of pure chance. So if I say "I hit my cat in the face" is that considered random?
Is anything really random?
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I wonder who?Sevre90210 said:
I did ip-dip-sky-blue on the BBC's latin test today. Thats random selection, right? XD
No, nothing is truly random. Everything is caused by something. Random is just shorthand for "very small seemingly insignificant causes."
Unless, of course, you were pre-determined to randomly select your answers, in which case it isn't random at all, because you were always going to pick those answers, even though you thought you were choosing randomly... *head explodes*WrongSprite said:
This is the problem I have with Chaos Theory. Extremely interesting though it may be, it confuses the hell out of me.
You might be confusing random with unexpected/unlikely.
Here's an example: When you sit in a chair, there is a %99.9 chance that the chair will not break, about a %.1 chance that it will break, and a small but non-zero chance that it will teleport you to the other side of the univrse. Getting teleported to the other side of the universe is going to be unlikely, but if you can figure out what makes the chair do that, then being teleported ceases to be random, and becomes mearly a vrey rare occurance. It would only be random if there was no way to figure out when someone would be teleported when they sat in the chair.
Here's an example: When you sit in a chair, there is a %99.9 chance that the chair will not break, about a %.1 chance that it will break, and a small but non-zero chance that it will teleport you to the other side of the univrse. Getting teleported to the other side of the universe is going to be unlikely, but if you can figure out what makes the chair do that, then being teleported ceases to be random, and becomes mearly a vrey rare occurance. It would only be random if there was no way to figure out when someone would be teleported when they sat in the chair.
The roll of a die could probably be considered completely random, though I'm sure some mathematician out there could predict what it will roll based on what number was facing up, how it rolled off my palm, and the type of surface it is rolling on. If I ever meet that person I will slap them.
Sometimes things can be random, if they are certain furniture words taken out of context of the sentance that they are placed in.
No, that's not what random means. Using random to mean "unexpected" is abhorent, and we must do our best to stamp out this plague.pimppeter2 said:
This might be totally wrong, but if I'm informed correctly, in Quantum Mechanics results may actually precede the cause.
So while there'd still be a correlation, it might be very difficult to detect it to us linear-thinking folk.
That'd imply that things aren't really random, just "jumbled" sometimes.
So while there'd still be a correlation, it might be very difficult to detect it to us linear-thinking folk.
That'd imply that things aren't really random, just "jumbled" sometimes.