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From: safir@dunedin.es.co.nz (Craig Collings)
Subject: Re: Randomness is a human concept (was Re: Time is a human concept)
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References: <367dn4$ls@euskadi.idbsu.edu>  <1994Oct13.135253.21576@galileo.cc.rochester.edu> <38qhnm$117@whitbeck.ncl.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 1 Nov 1994 07:27:19 GMT

In article <38qhnm$117@whitbeck.ncl.ac.uk> n4521558 <Rob.Smith@ncl.ac.uk> writes:
>From: n4521558 <Rob.Smith@ncl.ac.uk>
>Subject: Re: Randomness is a human concept (was Re: Time is a human concept)
>Date: 28 Oct 1994 09:53:58 GMT

>In article <1994Oct13.135253.21576@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>,
>stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu (Greg Stevens) says:
>>
>>In <1994Oct8.025507.11036@cabell.vcu.edu> has2bec@cabell.vcu.edu (Brooke E.
>Colquhoun) writes:

>>I think it's funny that you say RONDOMNESS is a human concept, when I
>>would have intuitively stated it as PATTERN is a human concept (pattern
>>being the opposite of randomness).
>>

>If randomness ISN'T s humsn concept, then where is it?
>Can you honestly say that you can find something truly rsndom, or
>are 'random' processes governed by very complex non-linear but
>deterministic laws?

Co-incidentally enough I have been mulling over this same question for several 
months from a statistics point of view.

I was doubting the validity of the Central Limit Theorem, which is the 
foundation stone of nearly all parametric statistics. Simply because no-one 
has ever found any "randomness" lying around. There is nothing which occurs 
that does not have at least one conditioning factor. 

Statisticians had to invent randomness as a 'background' or 'null' condition
against which they could test for some sort of patterning. But it doesn't 
actually exist.

Some statisticians late last century (usually analysing patterns of rail nets) 
used total uniformity as a null proposition. But likewise, I don't think 
anyone has found any instance of completely ordered pattern lying around 
either.

It would appear to me that randomness is the inverse of completely ordered 
pattern. And since an inversion shows the same topology as its original, they 
are apposite views of the same 'ideal totality'.

This (Aristotlean) ideal has only the value of convenient utility to recommend 
it. It is difficult to see how it would be possible to investigate and 
quantify pattern without reference to this 'ideal' which has no real incidence 
in nature.

Moral of the story: statistics can, at best, tell us what is unlikely to be 
true and at worst give an impression that pattern exists where it does not.

Moral of the question: stop looking for pattern for it is a particularly human 
illusion.


