<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small">Whether a radioactive nucleus decays is fundamentally random: there is nothing about the nucleus, its history, the environment that determines whether it will decay or not in the next minute. </span><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:small"><font face="comic sans ms, sans-serif">I have extreme reservations about whether they know all of this and even if they know what to look for, or indeed have the tools to do so even if they did. To me and Einstein, random is just a word for our ignorance. bill w</font></span></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 6:38 PM Stathis Papaioannou <<a href="mailto:stathisp@gmail.com">stathisp@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 08:02, William Flynn Wallace <<a href="mailto:foozler83@gmail.com" target="_blank">foozler83@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:large;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><div style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34)"><div class="gmail_quote" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><div dir="auto" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">understood what undetermined behaviour would entail.</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" dir="auto" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><div dir="auto" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><div dir="auto" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"></div></div></blockquote></div></div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(34,34,34)">Stathis Papaioannou</span></div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:large;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Here's random behavior: your left big toe itches; you right hand mimics playing a scale on the piano; one eye in batting to the beat of a Sousa march; you feel like eating; your bladder empties; you recall going to 1st grade; and so on. And it's unpredictable what any part of your body or mind is going to do next. bill w</div></div></blockquote><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">That description is consistent with your behaviour being determined, since there may be reasons for it, even if the reasons are unknown. Random behaviour is behaviour that occurs for no reason at all. The only example we have of random events are at the quantum level. Whether a radioactive nucleus decays is fundamentally random: there is nothing about the nucleus, its history, the environment that determines whether it will decay or not in the next minute. That is, it’s not just our ignorance, it is a fundamental aspect of the universe. Einstein objected to this, because he thought that there must be a reason for every event in the universe, and maybe we just haven’t discovered it. Most physicists have subsequently thought that Einstein was wrong about this.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:large;color:rgb(0,0,0)" dir="auto"></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 4:58 PM Stathis Papaioannou <<a href="mailto:stathisp@gmail.com" target="_blank">stathisp@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"></blockquote></div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 01:50, SR Ballard <<a href="mailto:sen.otaku@gmail.com" target="_blank">sen.otaku@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" dir="auto"><div dir="auto">You can’t control your actions IF they are determined. If actions are simple cause and effect (determined), then there is no choice, only the illusion of choice. <div><br></div><div>If you don’t mean “determined” as in “actually determines”, then picking the word determined was a huge fuckup back in the day by whoever decided that was the way to talk about it.</div><div><br></div><div>If actions are determined, then there’s no such thing as guilt — just like truly random actions, there was no choice, so no guilt. </div></div></blockquote><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">If your actions are not determined, they are random. There is no third possibility, neither-determined-nor-random. You could perhaps get away with a little bit of randomness, but too much would make it impossible to function. There are random events on the world, such as nuclear decay, but at large scales, including at biological scales, the world behaves essentially deterministically. Our notions of freedom and choice require a reliable causal connection between thought and perception, one thought and the next, thought and action, so determinism is assumed. People who claim that determinism and freedom are incompatible haven’t understood what undetermined behaviour would entail.</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex" dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"></div></div></blockquote></div></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr">Stathis Papaioannou</div>
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