[extropy-chat] Note on "Random (effects without a cause)" comment

[Jeff Medina]

I come across a lot of people equivocating randomness in a colloquial
sense of "random mutations" with indeterminism or acausality (i.e.,
they take "a random effect" to mean "an effect without a cause"). If
this is purely linguistic, feel free to ignore this message, with the
minor request that we make an effort to stop using these terms
interchangeably; it promotes public confusion about various areas of
science, like evolution.

In case it's conceptual, please note that no "random mutation" in
evolution is acausal or "an effect without a cause." They are
mutations *without a known cause* (in most cases) and *without a goal
or purpose*. This is very different, and claiming mutations are
totally without cause contributes to public intuition against the
plausibility of mutations leading to anything useful, among other
conceptual muddles.

Contemporary physics indicates two main possibilities. (1) Almost *no*
physical processes are acausal. This is if certain quantum events are
acausal, as some physicists suspect or assume. (2) No physical
processes at all are acausal - not even at the quantum level. The
possibility of determinism at the quantum level without requiring
hidden variables or any of that is argued by t'Hooft, for example.

--
Jeff Medina
http://www.painfullyclear.com/

Community Director
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/

Relationships & Community Fellow
Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies
http://www.ieet.org/

School of Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/phil/