Not Random...

I have for the longest times believed there is no such thing as random. Well when I say for the longest of times, the thought actually came when I was writing my thesis and required a random number generator for some GA work. Excel (yep my thesis was written in the humble Excel) had a random number generator, where you put in an upper value and a lower value and a random number will be generated between those two values. Now I thought, you are anyways limiting the range, and since the significance is also decided, there are a limited number of values that the number generated can take...!

also and more importantly, there has to be some algorithm by which the number is generated, which means if you have the algorithm, there is not such thing as random. 

What is random, but something which cannot be determined beforehand. So basically what we are saying is random can come out of only things where we don't have a way to predict the next value, we don't know the trend or the pattern or the algorithm. 

But the thought is just because we don't know it, doesn't mean someone else doesn't know. Who ever built it would surely know it, because s/he wrote the algorithm or designed the pattern in the first place. Its just that we are seeing such a small part of the pattern, we are not even seeing one block of the pattern and so don't even realize that there is one, and thus assume its random. As you go higher, and you understand more of the pattern, you can start predicting. 

Or maybe its just so complex that you have not worked out all the factors which affect it, one you do, you know the algo and end of randomness.

So the idea is that whatever level you are at, everything that you are seeing below will form a pattern and so be understandable and predictable and not random, where as everything above you, won't be, because you are below its level and still climbing, and maybe even part of it. If you have seen X-Files, there is an episode where Scully and Moulder know that the clue to something is on the floor...but can't make out. Then Moulder climbs a staircase and looks down, and he can make out a box X. So as you rise above the level, you realize what it is. 

Come to think of it, I first saw this in my 9th std class, where a really strict (and as you will see bored) Gujju language proff would ask students to read from the textbook. And like any other language teacher, he would pick random students, so that everyone was paying attention. In one class I paid attention to how he was choosing students, and after about 7-8 students, a pattern emerged. And I started predicting the totally random selection and became the hero for the day...(because now I told whose chance was next and so everyone else could relax). Ofcourse after I realized the pattern, I completely lost interest in it, was almost like 'thats it, i thought he would be more intell then that'.

Well anyways, so the thing is that once you realize and work out something you always kinda loose interest and move on. So going by that theory, at some date, way way into the future, we should be able to work out everything, and then there shall be no random. Everything shall be known, and that truly will be the end of progress and human kind. 

But this is where it gets interesting, I truly believe, that we will never be able to get to that stage, even if Mankind survives for infinity, simply because complexity also tends to infinity (or maybe it just has a headstart).  But as soon as you unravel something, you will realize that something is part of something larger (or in case of cells and molecules and atoms and so on, is composed of something smaller) which now needs to be unraveled. So at both ends of the scale there is something which will always be there to be discovered. So no, we haven't found the smallest particle, and yes there surely are multiple universes, and it might not just stop there. 

Its like expenses and money, expenses always grow to equal and surpass the money you have, or work and time, work always expands to fill the amount of free time you have. 

And why is that, maybe because all organisms are ambitious, and not really ambitious but all organisms need to survive, and to survive means to do better then what you have been till now. And so out of that ambition, comes the need to understand more and more, so that we can control what we understand and then move on. Am thinking what happened to cockroaches then, why did they stop evolving a million years ago, were they the ones who got real peace??!? :D

another scenario really is, and this goes completely against what i believe in, is that maybe there is  a creator, a creator of everything. In which case, two points, one, whatever we have cannot be infinite, because there is capacities to every ones ability, and secondly, maybe the creator is just cheating (or being intelligent), and as soon as we realize a pattern, s/he goes ahead and changes it, modifies it. 

well...whatever it is, we are never gonna find out. so chill.

and no no, am not high, its just Monday!
take care. thanks for reading till this point, and my sincere aplogies. :P