{"id":4349,"date":"2011-02-20T22:26:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-21T06:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=4349"},"modified":"2020-04-26T15:34:45","modified_gmt":"2020-04-26T22:34:45","slug":"randomness-and-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=4349","title":{"rendered":"Randomness and Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

When someone uses the word random<\/q>, part of me immediately wants a definition.[1]<\/span><\/p>

One notion of randomness is essentially that of lawlessness<\/em>. For example, I was recently slogging through a book that rejects the proposition that quantum-level events are determined by hidden variables<\/span>, and insists that the universe is instead irreducibly random<\/q>. The problem that I have with such a claim is that it seems incoherent<\/em>.<\/p>

There is no being<\/em> without being something<\/em>; the idea of existence<\/em> is no more or less than that of properties<\/em> in the extreme abstract. And a property<\/em> is no more or less than a law of behavior<\/em>.<\/p>

Our ordinary discourse does not distinguish between claims about a thing and claims about the idea<\/em> of a thing. Thus, we can seem to talk about unicorns<\/em> when we are really talking about the idea<\/em> of unicorns. When we say that unicorns do not exist<\/em>, we are really talking about the idea<\/em> of unicorns, which is how unicorns<\/q> can be<\/q> this-or-that without unicorns really being<\/em> anything.<\/p>

When it is claimed that a behavior is random<\/q> in the sense of being without law<\/em>, it seems to me that the behavior and the idea<\/em> of the behavior have been confused; that, supposedly, there's no property<\/em> in some dimension, yet it's going to express<\/em> itself in that dimension.<\/p>

Another idea of randomness is one of complexity<\/em>, especially of hopeless<\/em> complexity. In this case, there's no denial of underlying lawfulness; there's just a throwing-up of the hands at the difficulty in finding a law or in applying a law once found.<\/p>

This complexity notion makes awfully good sense to me, but it's not quite the notion that I want to present here. What unites the notion of lawlessness<\/em> with that of complexity<\/em> is that of practical unpredictability<\/em>. But I think that we can usefully look at things from a different<\/em> perspective.<\/p>

After the recognition that space<\/em> could be usefully conceptualized within a framework of three orthogonal, arithmetic dimensions, there came a recognition that time<\/em> could be considered as a fourth<\/em> arithmetic dimension, orthogonal to the other three. But, as an analogy was sensed amongst these four dimensions, a puzzle presented itself. That puzzle is the arrow of time<\/em>. If time were just like the other dimensions, why cannot we reverse ourselves along that dimension just as along the other three. I don't propose to offer a solution to that puzzle, but I propose to take a critical look at a class of ostensible solutions, reject<\/em> them, and then pull something from the ashes.<\/p>

Some authors propose to find the arrow of time in disorder<\/em>; as they would have it, for a system to move into the future is no more or less than for it to become more disorderly<\/em>.<\/p>

One of the implications of this proposition is that time would be macroscopic<\/em>; in sufficiently small systems, there is no increase nor decrease in order, so time would be said neither to more forward nor backward. And, as some of these authors note, because the propensity of macroscopic systems to become more disorderly is statistical<\/em>, rather than specifically absolute<\/em>, it would be possible<\/em> for time to be reversed, if a macroscopic system happened<\/em> to become more<\/em> orderly.<\/p>

But I immediately want to ask what it would even mean<\/em> to be reversed<\/em> here. Reversal is always relative.<\/em> The universe cannot be pointed in a different direction<\/em>, unless by universe<\/q> one means something other than everything<\/em>. Perhaps we could have a local<\/em> system become more orderly, and thus be reversed in time relative to some other<\/em>, except, then, that the local system doesn't seem to be closed. And, since the propensity to disorder is statistical, it's possible<\/em> for it to be reversed for the universe as a whole<\/em>, even if the odds are not only against that but astronomically<\/em> against it. What are we to make of a distinction between a universe flying into reverse and a universe just coming to an end? And what are we to make of a universe in which over-all order increases for some time less than the universe has already existed? Couldn't this be, and yet how could it be if the arrow of time were a consequence of disorder?<\/p>

But I also have a big problem with notions of disorder<\/em>. In fact, this heads us back in the direction of notions of randomness<\/span>.<\/p>

If I take a deck of cards that has been shuffled, hand it to someone, and ask him or her to put it in order<\/em>, there are multiple ways that he or she might do so. Numbers could be ascending or descending within suits, suits could be separated or interleaved, &c. There are as many possible orderings as there are possible rules for ordering, and for any sequence, there is some rule to fit it<\/em>. In a very important sense, the cards are always ordered<\/em>. To describe<\/em> anything is to fit a rule to it, to find an order for it. That someone whom I asked to put the cards in order would be perfectly correct to just hand them right back to me, unless I'd specified some order other<\/em> than that in which they already were.<\/p>

Time's arrow is not<\/em> found in real disorder<\/em> generally, because there is always<\/em> order. One could focus on specific classes of order, but, for reasons noted earlier, I don't see the explanation of time in, say, thermodynamic entropy<\/span>.<\/p>

But, return to decks of cards. I could present two decks of card, with the individual cards still seeming to be in mint state, with one deck ordered familiarly<\/em> and with the other in un<\/em>familiar order. Most people would classify the deck in familiar order as ordered<\/q> and the other as random<\/q>; and most people would think the ordered<\/q> deck as more likely straight from the pack than the random<\/q> deck. Unfamiliar orderings of some<\/em> things are often the same thing as complex<\/em> orderings, but the familiar orderings of decks of cards are actually conventional<\/em>. It's only if we use a mapping<\/em> from a familiar ordering to an unfamiliar ordering that the unfamiliar ordering seems complex. Yet even people who know<\/em> this are going to think of the deck in less familiar order as likely having gone through something more than the deck with more familiar order. Perhaps it is less fundamentally complexity than experience<\/em> of the evolution of orderings that causes us to see the unfamiliar orderings as random<\/q>. (Note that, in fact, many people insist<\/em> that unfamiliar<\/em> things are complicated<\/q> even when they're quite simple<\/em>, or that familiar things are simple<\/q> even when they're quite complex.)<\/p>

Even if we do not explain the arrow of time with disorder, we associate<\/em> randomness<\/q> with the effects of physical processes, which processes take time<\/em>. Perhaps we could invert the explanation<\/em>. Perhaps we could operationalize our conception of randomness in terms of what we expect<\/em> from a class of processes (specifically, those not guided by intelligence<\/em>) over time.<\/p>

(Someone might now object that I'm begging the question of the arrow of time, but I didn't propose to explain it, and my readers all have the experience<\/em> of that arrow; it's not a rabbit pulled from a hat.)<\/p>

[1]<\/span> Other words that cause the same reäction are probability<\/q> and capitalism<\/q>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When someone uses the word random, part of me immediately wants a definition.[1] One notion of randomness is essentially that of lawlessness. For example, I was recently slogging through a book that rejects the proposition that quantum-level events are determined by hidden variables, and insists that the universe is instead irreducibly random. The problem that […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,720,719,175,4],"tags":[947,940,437,939,937,938],"class_list":["post-4349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-epistemology","category-metaphysics","category-philosophy","category-public","tag-definitions","tag-disorder","tag-entropy","tag-order","tag-randomness","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}