BigD

You been talking to Ryan again?

Jorsher

No, but I did start tearing apart his car yesterday, because you know from the beginning I've been telling him the head gasket is shot. Chris put it back together today, only to tell him that "your headgasket is blown." So, I said ---- going back over there to redo what I started yesterday because some dipshit didn't believe I knew what I was talking about.

I don't think ryan can grasp this concept. He started his psychotic episode when Jay and I were having a nice mushroom enhanced philosophical discussion about time.

USS

When I think of random I think of

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J5titd0Kbw


EDIT: ---- YOU ALREADY LINKED KRIS KROSS

idiot-stick

Wow. Same here. It's hard to get people to understand because they'll say "Ok, I'm gonna decide to raise my hand", they do so and say - "see I have free will".

It takes a very open mind to see the whole idea but once you do there's no going back. It's just the way ---- works. There's no if's and's or but's about it. It's just mechanics.

The belief is called "Determinism" and I am a determinist.

I was pondering how a computer generated a random number and came to the conclusion that it doesn't. It can't. Then I started thinking about my own brain and came to the same conclusion

Jorsher

Didn't know there was a name for the belief. I'll have to read more about it.

Computer random numbers, actually someone brought that up yesterday. I kindly explained to them how computers can in no way generate one, and a majority of them just use the time as a seed and an algorithm to generate the "random" number. There are better algorithms that make less predictable numbers, but being that a computer is a logic machine it can all be predicted. WE possibly can't predict it without having every bit of the info that the computer's random number comes from, but it doesn't make it "random."

Anything that is random, is only random because we don't have the ability to gather what's necessary to predict it. But, it's still predictable.

DrSeuss

Free will or the illusion of free will is related to the random firing of neurons within the brain. New Scientist did an article about it a while ago.

Chaos theory is actually quite similar to what you are discussing about the complexity of a system preventing us from fully understanding it. To accurately model weather systems would require knowing the state of every atom on the planet and its interactions with every other atom. The complexity of which prevents us from ever knowing whether it is about to rain. Doesn't mean it couldn't be done, just means understanding that level of complexity is very unlikely.

And the same goes for our brain, chaos theory dictates we will never fully understand the way in which spontaneous firing of neurons affects the other neurons surrounding it. Partly because of the complexity of interconnections (about 1000 synaptic connections for every single brain cell).

Oh yeah, drugs are bad.

j3w

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory

it's what i have my degree in.

Jorsher

Yep. Not saying that we will ever be able to predict it, I'm about 99% sure we won't, BUT it is something that could be predicted if we had the capability...thus free will is BS and Christians are lying to me.

78NOVA

i sniffed coke at work last night, i did get the sensation of cherries though...........although nothing happened to me? weird or no?

Jorsher

I didn't get the sensation of any of that. It suddenly felt like my heart was pounding, probably because it was, and I felt a little euphoric. Not that interesting to me.