Life is random
 

Okay, ehre is my big theory.

We will never trully understand biology, even if we know how everything works.

Why?

Because it is ALL random.

When pyruvate in a cell "goes to the mitochondria" it actually bounces around in the cytoplasm, randomly till it hits the outer membane.

How did organic matter first appear on Earth?

RANDOM beams of lightning hitting certain molecules with odds in the billions of hitting.

Now, random doesn't seem bad, but humans cannot process randomness. Our brains aren't wred that way, we draw conclusions, and you can't do that with randomness.

So in a way, life is a BIG game of pinball.

You never know what is going to happen with very limited control.

My discussion for you to answer is disagreeing, comments, or new proposals. off mine, or your own.

Humans can process randomness. See that word I used there? "Randomness?" The presence of that word kinda indicates that we have a concept of randomness.

Also, who told you how life began, and why didn't they tell the rest of us?

We could, theoretically, "trully (sic) understand biology." If we knew how everything worked, then we could map out all premutations of a biological process. We never will fully understand biology, but theoretically, with proper (non-existant) tools, we could.

Actually, you need to refer to a set of experiements who found out without oxygen, organic compounds could be made.

Learned it by reading a Biology text book.

Your just not informed.

And though we can create randomness, our brains always think up of patterns, and that is ALWAYS true. We can't fully comprehend that.

In truth, molecules don't just randomly bounce around the cytoplasm. You need to understand the complexity of human cellular processes, and science's ensuing understanding of it before making that kind of blanket statement. For major cellular processes that require a fair amount of precision in movement around the cytoplasm (metabolism, DNA replication, protein synthesis, etc...) there is a delicate framework of protein microtubules and microfilaments that facilitates not only the anchoring of organelles (mitochondria, nuclei, ER, etc...), but in some cases the guiding of specialized transport proteins. Random movement is an impossibilty in most cases (exceptions being the diffusion of hormones into the bloodstream and the ensuing cascade reactions in the cell, which work via exponential message amplification and mass signaling, among others), as in the case of the export of insulin from pancreas cells. In this process, the protein Insulin is synthesized in the Pancreatic cell's copious Rough ER (Rough Endoplasmic Reticulum; a cell's main protein-manufacturing site) and is moved into a group of constantly changing, membranous sacs known as the Golgi apparatus, where it is concentrated into membrane sacs for transport outside of the cell. This is only one example.

Hmm, yes, some have evolved past randomness, but should i bring up the randomness in cellular respiration and photosynthsis?

But the cell gets oxygen out of it still. It doesn't matter if there's randomness, we decipher it to the level we need to until it's "good enough." You only control what you need to because that's easiest, and let the rest be random. If something is affected too much by randomness, there will be innovations to decrease randomness. The cell doesn't plan for every random encounter, it's just able to deal with many different ones. While we can't tell what one individual cell will do, we can say in theoretical terms what a cell with the same conditions would do.

We can understand everything a cell's structure can do. Even if we can't understand every situation where that cell could be in, we can still understand how it will deal with all of those situations.

Sato, you have it backwards, actually (IMO). If you take it literally, nothing in our physical world is random (I'm lying. Read further). Everything in our universe from planets to mountains to life in general, all the way from the simple microbe to the complex mammal, works according to classical mechanics and physics, which doesn't allow for randomness. In theory, if you had all the mathematics and some way of computing the massive amount of data, you could acurately predict the age, weight, height, location, occupation, etc of your great great great grandson who won't even be born for another 50 years (you could predict date of birth as well). You could predict the personality of this person. His friends and relatives. Everything.

Of course, this is impossible for one reason**. We humans (as well as who knows how many animals) have free will. This is where you had it backwards: free will in the brain requires a degree of randomness and is impossible according to classical mechanics and physics. The logical algorithms that are thought to run the brain (much like a modern computer) don't allow for randomness. There is a theory that the brain involves quantum mechanics in its processes (I'm not just making this up either) which would allow for a sort of controlled randomness in the brain, making free will possible. Thus, we can be random. Otherwise, we'd all be mindless robots, unable to comprehend innovation and creativity.

(As a side note, this is also one of the reasons true AI is thought to be impossible without quantum computers. Classical computing doesn't allow for true AI. This is way off topic though.)

If you don't believe that (it's just a theory after all), then just the fact we can percive randomness; understand and comprehend what it means, must mean we can be random. Otherwise we wouldn't even have a concept for it.

So, in conclusion, we're random, the universe isn't ('cept at molecular levels).

[footnote]** The actual reason this is impossible is quantum mechanics and physics, which allow for true randomness. Free will is just an example of quantum mech/phys(IMO) that applies to this discussion.[/footnote]

I believe nothing is random, not even free will. Free will is just decisions based off of past influences, what you know and don't know, what seems best at the time, etc. If you knew everything about a person and the situation they are in, you could predict what they do, when they do, why they do, how they do, and such.
As c-dog explained, the universe isn't random either...
So, I believe everything seems random, but isn't.

Huh, where to begin...

First off, Sato, I recommend you read a biology textbook above grade 11. If you actually do believe our cells are being maintained by randomness, then you should probably be decomposing in the next 30 seconds. Thank you to RangerAidan for more or less clearing this up. I'm not schooled to an extreme level yet, either, but I know for a fact that a HUGE (HUGE) amount of celluar processes are all about organization and transportation. That's what makes the difference between a cell and dumping some organic chemicals into your bathtub.

Secondly, you, and no one else, knows how life began. I can say with relative certainty that no one will ever know (at least in the conceivable future). The utterly crude example you gave about lightning strikes is but one theory of how life came to be. (The other prominent theory escapes me currently, but it involves the asteroids filled with organic compounds). Experiments have already been conducted where basic hydrocarbons and organic material were smashed together at incredible speeds (akin to that of a comet or meteor impact, >5000 km/h). The materials retrieved after the experiment turned out to be many common amino acids and polypeptides found in humans. This is one example of many others where the beginning of life may not have relied on random primordial oozing. (Although in my opinion, the beginning of life would have involved a combination of bits and pieces many current theories).

Thirdly, C-Dog and the rest are more or less on the right track. The effect of quantum mechanics on the macroscopic world we inhabit is completely negligible. (It tends to have effect on atomic scales, and on cosmic scales spanning many billions of years). Now, I can't say that with absolute certainty, but classical physics is used everyday with monstrous accuracy, there's little reason to believe otherwise. Now, saying nothing is random is no good either. Rather, I think a lot of supposed randomness arises from abrupt change that an individual did not necessarily expect. (Ie, I didn't expect that boulder to crack and fall, but it happened to, for describeable physical reasons, and now I have to deal with it. How random!)

Can't understand randomness? Ok, well...no. There is one number, and ten possible outcomes. The number will ultimately occupy one of these ten outcomes. (1 through 10). What are the chances of the number becoming 3 if this is a randomly occurring process? I could have said that example using a ten-sided dice, and for our purposes, it works just as well. But I do need to mention that given enough supercomputers (none we possess today that I know of), you could calculate exactly where the dice lands, and on what number, by inputting enough data regarding air resistance, gravity, dice position, velocity, and your hand position. For practical purposes, it is considered random, because nothing can compute that much data.

More to come, probably.

I restate, if you know everything about the person AND situation (i.e. the person and the status of the boulder) you could predict what the person will do.
Yeah, if you know all the angles, velocities, resistances, etc of a situation, you can calculate what will happen (i.e. dice).
This is kind of off topic, but for future reference--computers can't generate random things either. The so-called 'Random Number Generators' that are made usually determine numbers based off a time, such as the amount of milliseconds since windows was installed. If there was a way to make a random generator program, that would be a great leap into making A.I.
O.o