Order vs. Randomness

[Rayaan]

Sure, I can grant that. But these are just descriptions, words to distinguish between our perceptions of what appears orderly and what appears random. What if it is both... or neither (if that is even intelligible in any fathomable way)?

Well, I don't think it can be both since the word "randomness" (in the true meaning of the word) means an absence of order or pattern.

Read the following quote from a paper titled "Incompleteness, Complexity, Randomness and Beyond."

Randomness means the absence of order or pattern. In an extreme sense there is no such notion as “true randomness.” As an illustration note that any sequence (the simplest mathematical infinite object) has some kind of order, regularity. For example, van der Waerden (1927) proved that in all binary sequences at least one of the two symbols must occur in arithmetical progressions of every length. Many other patterns common to all sequences have been subsequently discovered.

Therefore, I think that true randomness is an illusory concept. What is ultimately real is that which is orderly and perfect, in and of itself.

Even if the universe is fundamentally ordered, however, this is not suggestive, in my mind, of intelligence, any more than hurricanes, mountains, gravity, or atoms would be "ordered" but are not intelligent!

Yes, those things by themselves are not intelligent. However, when you begin to study and understand their orderly interactions and their relationship with everything else at a global scale, all such interactions over the course of time seem to be governed by an even more fundamentally intelligent, self-organizing system, which is consistent with the functioning of a mind.

But let's break that down to a real-life example. Take an atom. Is an atom intelligent? Not in any way that I can imagine, unless by intelligence we are applying the term to literally everything we see! Perhaps it is orderly though. Are two atoms, chemically bonded, intelligent? Still, no. But orderly? Even more so than one, at least! I think you would agree. But what about a trillion atoms, bonded to form molecules and subsequently nerve cells. Is a nerve cell intelligent? Again, no. But definitely ordered! But how about 10 billion nerve cells that interact to form something like conscious awareness? Now we're talking intelligence! Take my example and apply it to quantum particles and waves, or even the laws of physics themselves. It might make sense to call these ordered but... does it make sense to call these things intelligent? If not, why do their preceding causes need to be?

Same thing. It's the same answer as in my previous comment.

Your litany that "order is an aspect of intelligence" is so weasely and vague. Intelligence as we know it needs a certain amount of order as prerequisite, but not the other way around! Intelligence is what a neural network does. You simply don't have a good reason to think that intelligence is a more fundamental aspect of nature than that.

Like you just said, "Intelligence as we know it needs a certain amount of order as prerequisite," which again implies that intelligence cannot possibly exist unless it is an aspect of order itself. In that sense we can say that order at the most fundamental level already contains intelligence embedded inside of itself. Otherwise, order wouldn't be order since order requires intelligence to be an aspect of itself in the first place.

It's kind of like asking, which came first: Order or intelligence? My answer is that they both become one and the same thing as we go further down.

You can think all you want. Can you give me any reason why I should think so, too? I would like to know it! Start with a sensible definition of what you mean by complexity.

Complexity is just another word that conveys order, pattern, or a dependent relationship between the different parts of a system.

However, the complexity of any particular object (such as a snowflake or a fractal, for example), can be compressed into a simpler description. We can do that by finding an algorithm or a simple set of rules behind that object. In fact, I believe that everything that exists in this world can be described by mathematics. But the complexity is preserved in the sense that the algorithm behind it would have to be just as complex as the thing which it is describing.

It's just that the complexity exists as two different forms at the same time, i.e. a mathematical form and a physical form. That doesn't mean that there is a change in the amount of complexity itself; it was all there already.

The reason why we have structure and intelligence in the universe is that it started in a low entropy state.

See, even you just made a connection between structure and intelligence in the universe and the existence of order (or "low entropy state," as you put it). But, earlier, you denied my contention that there is a correspondence between order and intelligence (you clearly wrote "No they aren't in correspondence"), thereby contradicting yourself.

And, as I explained before:

The more you discover new explanations (or theories, concepts, algorithms, relationships, etc) that simplify something else, the more coherence and order you will find between those things and in reality in general. And the fact that there is order and coherence in reality, is what allowed you to discover all those simpler explanations. What does that tell us? It tells us that there is a logically dependent correlation between order and intelligence.

That is how order and intelligence are linked together, which you haven't refuted yet, except give more support to with your own comments above.

There is no reason to believe that matter and energy having properties that allow order to emerge from chaos is the result of any intention.

I disagree, because if matter and energy are able to behave in an orderly enough manner as to cause parts of the universe to be able to perceive itself (via intelligent beings), and then those same parts start claiming that this whole process was something totally mindless/purposeless/non-intelligent/non-aware, then they are technically saying that the universe is not aware of its own awareness (the "awareness" part being themselves). However, that's a self-referential paradox and thus cannot be true.

The universe isn't random, it is chaotic. They are not the same.

The universe is not even chaotic. Everything in it are obeying the laws of physics. And laws are lawful, and orderly, which is clearly the opposite of chaotic.

That being said, maybe you should clarify what you mean by "chaotic."