Randomness and Determinism

My thoughts here are adapted from my earlier post, Omniscient Machines. This is (in my opinion) a clearer and more refined explanation of my stance on determinism. After discussing it at length with my peers for several years, I've been able to weed out some of the logical issues and explain it in a more concise manner.

Can science prove or disprove determinism?

If so, it must first prove or disprove the concept of randomness. I'm defining determinism as the belief that everything in the timeline of the universe was predetermined as soon as the Big Bang happened, and I'm defining randomness as the concept that some things can happen spontaneously and without cause. If something happens "randomly", that technically means it had no cause at all, it "just happened". Determinism, by definition, requires that every event which occurs had a cause (and will have an effect). If it's possible for anything to happen randomly, determinism is false.

So is randomness real?

At first you might say yes, of course it is-- and you might provide examples like the rolling of a die, or the use of a random number generator. I'd argue that those things aren't really random, though. In throwing a die, if you were to throw it with a known force at a known trajectory, and if you had measured other variables like air currents in the area and the restitution between the dice and the surface onto which it's being thrown, you could calculate with certainty what number it would land on. Thus, it's possible to predict the outcome of a dice throw before it occurs, meaning the throw isn't truly random. What about a random number generator, though? Actually, these aren't truly random either-- when a computer generates a random number, it must first be given a "seed" to run through a complex series of algorithms and computations, after which the "random" number is generated. This seed is usually given by the current time in seconds (or miliseconds, microseconds, etc.) because it's always changing, ensuring the number generated isn't always the same. One popular "true random number generator" at http://www.random.org/ uses atmospheric noise as its seed. But, if the generator is given the same seed twice, it will always generate the same number each time. So, you can predict the number that will be generated as long as you know the seed-- and in this case, the seed can be treated as the cause of the number generated. You can use similar arguments to show that the winning of a lottery or the spinning of the Wheel of Fortune aren't examples of true randomness either.

A counterexample to the above argument is quantum mechanics; the idea that when a particle is in a quantum state, the state it chooses when the waveform is collapsed is completely random. If that's true, then yes, determinism is false. But we still have a very limited understanding of quantum mechanics. We interpret the state chosen as being random, but perhaps that's a result of our model being too simple or of us making false assumptions. If so, quantum mechanics is as pseudo-random as all of the examples in the above paragraph.

If nothing is random, then nothing happens without a cause or a reason. If that's true, then everything that has happened and will happen in the timeline of the universe was determined during the big bang. Ergo, determinism is true.

Generally, people resist the notion of everything being predetermined because it makes life seem purposeless. This seems rather depressing. I'd argue that it's possible to be a determinist, but at the same time believe that life is far from purposeless. Just because everything that happens is determined doesn't mean that we can build a machine to predict the future. To do so, we would need a supercomputer capable of observing and cataloging all of the information in the universe. This is, of course, impossible for many reasons, but perhaps the biggest issue is that this computer would have to exist in another universe, otherwise you'd end up with the recursive issue of having to catalog the information in the computer itself. So, even though the choices you'll make and the future you'll have has already been decided, you can't possibly know anything about this, meaning you still get the excitement of having to wait to find out (which I think is the main qualm people have with determinism). Of course, determinism implies you don't really have free will-- but all that means is that every decision you make is the result of everything that has happened in your life, as well as your biology. Logic dictates everything. It means you'll never make a decision for no reason at all-- and is that really a bad thing?