BBC: Horizon - Consciousness and free will

[Final-Fan]

Slimebeast said:

Final-Fan said:

Final-Fan said:
Well, as long as you're saying "IMO" and not claiming that you're definitely right. Or, I suppose, if you claim you're definitely right but admit that your certainty is faith-based.

I completely understand that lacking proof you want to go with your gut (although I myself try not to rule something out on a gut feeling) but you must admit that it doesn't constitute evidence supporting that conclusion.

And ultima has a point; it isn't that there isn't evidence for randomness, it's that you believe there is some other factor for which there is no evidence at all that invalidates that evidence.

So? Many scientists and philosofers do this all the time. They have dedicated their careers to it, do it as their full time jobs, get public funding for it and move science and knowledge forward by proposing alternate explanations, theories and stuff. It's perfectly valid in my opinion.

Plus I wanna lift up one thing. It's the essence of randomness. I'm not an expert on this, I havent read much such material but my gut feeling tells me that not just Einstein but many modern scientists feel the same about randomness. That it's essence is such that randomness (and probabilism) is nonsense when explaining things. I argue that it's just a descritptional term. I have a hard time explaining it myself, what I exactly mean.

I think it bodes down to arguments about logic and reality, and wheather everything has a cause, and weather randomness is a possible 'cause' or not.

Okay, no.  Scientists do not say they are right about something with no evidence at all to support them. 

They may have an idea, and go out and test it, and with that evidence they may say "aha, this matches my idea" (although they should be doing their best with these tests to disprove the idea) -- but none of that is what you are doing, except the "have an idea" part. 

If you are saying that you are philosophically opposed to the existence of randomness, I think that's likely a good description of your position, but I think your philosophical objections are meaningless to science.  It's worse than apples and oranges, because at least they're both fruit. 

Einstein did hate randomness, but he didn't just say "well I'm uncomfortable with that concept so I'm gonna dream up hypothetical reasons it might not be so".  He tried to work out the math to nail down whether or not it was true.