Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by spynxic | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

spynxic·

> The real world has truly random events, and while it bothers many people..

Replace the word random with unpredictable and it shows why some people are bothered.

To say something is fundamentally unpredictable means that it is immeasurable and not merely complex.

View on HN

Random is the word we use in physics. It isn't wrong. You're kind of just giving the definition of random. True random. Not pseudo random, which computers give you (and is usually called pseudo random explicitly). And you can measure the events, you just can't PREDICT it with certainty. Though you can predict it stochastically.

> To say something is fundamentally unpredictable means that it is immeasurable.

No, it just means that the measure cannot be predicted in advance.

OTOH, the observer effect can make measurement problematic.

This is true (Heisenberg uncertainty more says you can only get so much resolution in your measurement), but I was staying more general because there are other events that are random. Radioactive decay is completely random and isn't affected by an observer.

That is because you don't actually observe the radioactive decay event; you observe it's byproducts. And the presence of an observer of those byproducts certainly changes their behavior (attenuation/scattering, energy, absorption depending on detection method) as opposed to if there were no observer looking at that byproduct.

I was more referencing the actual event of decay. Sure, the byproducts exhibit the standard quantum effects. the byproducts are particles after all.

And just to be clear, you do not think an observer has to be a conscious being, right? I only ask because pop culture science gives this impression. A photon can be an observer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com