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Questions tagged [randomness]

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7 votes
6 answers
1k views

Are there different types of randomness?

The philosophy of probability is a subject on which many books and papers have been written, so the subject is obviously of interest to philosophers. There are many ways in which the subject of ...
Mike Steele's user avatar
3 votes
5 answers
225 views

Is Everything in Time Subject to Cause and Effect?

Is the universe wholly deterministic, with every event in time being a result of a specific cause, or might some events occur independently of prior causes? I’m seeking to understand if cause and ...
george orwell's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
56 views

Is "Murphy's Law" researchable?

This universe is, IMHO, the worst of all places: Entropy makes it even worse all the time, quantum mechanics makes it unpredictable, and stupid and jerky humans makes it a living hell. Of course, the ...
Hauke Reddmann's user avatar
3 votes
4 answers
168 views

What are the factors that help you determine randomness?

Suppose you are given a sequence full of digits. You are tasked to find the truth between two hypotheses: a) the sequence is random, and uniformly distributed. I.e. the sequence was generated from a ...
user avatar
13 votes
12 answers
3k views

Does the "Sniper Firing Squad" analogy undermine the anthropic principle’s objection to the fine-tuning argument for God's existence?

The anthropic principle, also known as the "observation selection effect", is the hypothesis, first proposed in 1957 by Robert Dicke, that the range of possible observations that could be ...
user avatar
3 votes
4 answers
232 views

Is there a distinction between one iteration and multiple iterations of Sleeping Beauty Problem?

Take two set-ups of the Sleeping Beauty experiment Set-up 1 The experiment is performed once. What is the probability that a random awakening corresponds to Heads? Set-up 2 The experiment is ...
Ryder Rude's user avatar
-3 votes
2 answers
202 views

Would the inability to mathematically prove randomness in our world prove that we live in the simulator? [closed]

My personal impression is that advocates of Hegel's absolute idea, or, the World inside a computer simulator, have a much easier time proving this, given how our world obeys common, predictable, ...
TheMatrix Equation-balance's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
77 views

Live in stochastic harmony with your environment

Let's assume you are in the following situation: You have to decide between two Paths A and B. You know for sure that exactly one path has a return of 1, the other 0. You also know that A has the ...
Hansebenger's user avatar
4 votes
13 answers
3k views

Can randomness create patterns?

I have heard the notion of randomness being able to create patterns but it seems that in every case of this, it is more of a perceived pattern more than anything. Every “pattern” usually ends up being ...
user avatar
2 votes
6 answers
157 views

The initial point of everything

Every action is influenced by something, an action happens when it is intended to. Isn't everything influenced by some other phenomena that itself has been influenced by other events? Then every ...
shubham rajana's user avatar
-1 votes
4 answers
152 views

How can we establish that causal relationships existed in the past?

From Hume's problem of induction, it is intuitive to me that, for example, "taking aspirin in the past has relieved my headaches" is insufficient to say with certainty that "taking an ...
IAAW's user avatar
  • 101
2 votes
3 answers
265 views

Can an accident be prevented?

There's a whole safety industry that I'm sure will say they can be prevented, but do they really? I looked up the word's definition: accident | ˈaksədənt | noun an event that happens by chance or ...
Vita's user avatar
  • 129
0 votes
1 answer
100 views

Reasoning and Randomness

What is the relation between reasoning and randomness or more specifically finding any relation between logic and stochastic processes? Why does it work so well, I wonder. For instance, prices in ...
quanity's user avatar
  • 1,567
4 votes
10 answers
2k views

Are these random experiments the same?

Consider two experiments concerning similar fair coins(*): Throw the same coin N times and observe the outcome. Throw N similar but different coins 1 time each and observe the outcome. (*) One can ...
Nikos M.'s user avatar
  • 2,931
11 votes
3 answers
2k views

Is there any rigorous definition of just one single random choice?

The theory of probability uses random variables, which avoids the need to define what one single random choice means. Yet in everyday conversations about probability, even professional probabilists ...
Daniel Asimov's user avatar

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