BBC: Horizon - Consciousness and free will

[Final-Fan]

Slimebeast said:

Final-Fan said:

Slimebeast said:

Final-Fan said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_variable_theory

This seems to be what you are referring to, but I don't know which of the theories resembles what you are talking about.

Bohm's idea sounds too mystic for my taste.

I don't know which one in particular, but I remember reading about it some time ago and my understanding was that they're playing around with theories about stuff going on in other dimensions that are currently unmeasurable by us.

I wanna clear something up:  is your position that the other dimensions are outside this universe, so none of our physical laws that govern this universe allow randomness, but randomness that happens in the other dimension(s) still happens to us deterministically? 

Or is it that the randomness isn't really random at all, and even if it's coming from another dimension it's still somehow deterministic in origin in the other dimension as well as our own universe? 

I'm confused by your questions.

My position is that there's no randomness. There are possibly other dimensions (that are part of our universe) that we can't currently measure and we don't know their nature (today we can only guess, like string theory does), but if we did know their nature and could detect what's going on there it would explain the 'random' behaviour of particles in the four dimensions that we are able to measure today.

Okay forget the other universe part.  I misunderstood. 

It sounds like you hold the second position, that it's NOT the case that the other dimension is somehow exempt from being deterministic instead of random, but RATHER that the randomness is not really random, only seeming to be. 

But why can't the other dimensions have true randomness if they can have a different nature?  In other words, if you don't know their nature, how do you know that their nature does not extend to having randomness -- what has been proven about the nature of the other dimensions that results in you knowing that limitation? 

I don't know too much about quantum physics and especially string theory, so forgive me if the question has an obvious answer to you.