Random: The impossible occurrence

FTLComm - Tisdale - Wednesday, November 13, 2002

As a child I found that adults were extraordinarily complicated and in so many ways they were just not up to the task of life. I often wondered just how they managed having to cope with things that just did not make sense. Though there are many examples, this one might show you what I mean. I remember watching my father sharpen a knife for my mother and I had also observed him sharpening a saw blade and in both cases he, and all adults, really believe that the idea of sharpness is something they can achieve. Adults believe in the idea that material can be made sharp. In reality all things can be sharpened but sharp is a logical impossibility As a person bevels the surface of each side toward a point, that point will, though becoming smaller, will by the nature of all matter, be impossible to create a point that is more pointed than a single atom and even that could not be a point. This was crystal clear to me, yet adults would actually argue with me about this "point."

The second and much more burdensome thought for adults is the concept of random occurrence Their language I discovered was filled with references to something they called "luck" or "fate" or "chance." It takes no more than a few seconds thinking to realise that there is simply no such thing. Every event, no matter how complex, or how simple, is determined by contributing events. The creation of anything "just happening" is completely impossible. Everything is a consequence.

Now what is remarkable is that as a child the awareness of these sorts of immutable facts is crystal clear, but as age moves onward, I and every other thinking being around me, was forced to accept the untruths of accepted belief. To my own horror I saw that by the time I was seven I was giving in more and more to these fantasies of adulthood. But the idea of random occurrence was for me, the saddest one to see myself begin to accept the adult world's superstitions, and for the most part amazingly simpleton idea that things can spontaneously happen.

Each person reading this is snickering to themselves as they challenge the childish idea that I am putting forward, because by the time you learned to read, you were forced by the adult world to accept chance, fate and randomness as a part of reality. All of these are a lie. They can not occur.

One of the greatest challenges to computer technology was to create "random" numbers. Massive amounts of time have been dedicated to creating "random number" generators and every single effort is a total failure because nothing can be truly random.

Look at the clump of frozen weeds in the picture at the top of the page and the immediate explanation, and the absolutely wrong reason, is that it is by chance that this clump of weeds happened to grow there. We all dismiss the need for evidence and toss up the idea that it was chance that lead these stocks of weeds to grow in this location, but they are a direct result of a cause and effect relationship. Everything happens because of circumstances that produce a given effect.

On several occasions I have mentioned the "chaos theory" in this web site to assist people in coming to terms with the significant affects that ripple outward even from the most seemingly insignificant event. The discussion and advertisements related to discussions about the environment as they relate to the Kyoto Accord are outstanding examples of how everyone likes to exaggerate both the idea of randomness, or the importance of minor consequences.

There is no such thing as luck, you don't have a lucky tie, that rabbit's foot is grotesque and calling the Shakespearean play "The Scottish Play" instead of "MacBeth" is pure stupidity. However, there are mathematical formulas and good guesses that will narrow the odds, or give someone a grasp on probability, but the further one speculates from this moment to what will happen in another is not related to something called fate or fortune, it is directly related to events set in motion that will produce consequences.

Timothy W. Shire

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Editor : Timothy W. Shire Faster Than Light Communication Box 1776, Tisdale, Saskatchewan, Canada, S0E 1T0 306 873 2004