Matthew asked:

Me and my mate came up with this idea that nothing is random and that the outcome of everything
that happens is determined by some form of input. However many inputs are very small and there are
many of them. Therefore it is not practically possible to predict the outcome of most of the things that
happen around us. For example if you type =RAND() into Excel it will give you a random number. No,
somewhere in the code for Excel there is a rule to how the computer calculated this number,
therefore if you know this code and all the inputs that go into it you can predict the number that will
come out at the end.

Is this idea published anywhere, if so where and by whom? Or am I talking a load rubbish?

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You are not talking rubbish, but sense. You have arrived at Leibniz' "Principle of Sufficient Reason"
that "nothing is without reason for its being, and for being as it is". Schopenhauer characterised the
principle of sufficient reason as that which "authorises us everywhere to search for the why".

If everything has a reason, there is really no such thing as "random" or "chance", in the sense of
"uncaused". Random or chance events areconcepts without reality, another way of saying that the
cause or causesare not known.

Tony Kelly

Well, the idea that our fate is determined, that our life is determined by the stars, the local gods, the
fates, the planets, etc. etc,is probably as old as humanity. Now if you're talking about "input", the
question is, "towhat?" You mean, in the context of modern physics, can there be randomness? The
answer to that seemedto be a resounding "yes". Remember Einstein's remark, "god does not play
dice"? That's just what he was referring to, and to the results of quantum mechanics (QM), which
indicated that there isindeed randomness at the heart of the physical world. (As far as computers go,
it depends on how the random number table was arrived at. Some are calculated, in which case they
are not strictly speaking random; some however are arrived at by charting the "output" of radioactive
materials or thermal motion or what-have-you; as random as you can get.)

Now, getting back to randomness... the randomness which has been understood to underlie physicsis
now not absolutely certain. The basics of QM, as it is now understood, are indeedin part random
processes. However there have recently been some experiments, and theory, which seem to indicate
that the experiments that supported randomness (i.e., the experiments supporting Bell's Theorem)
hold only in particular conditions. If this is true, then some hypotheses employing what are termed
"hidden variables" (which Einstein wanted, and which Bell's theorem said could not exist) may in
many cases (indeed an infinite number of situations) be the case, and there are then processes
"behind" or "beneath" the QM probability distributions. We do not as yet know whether this is true, but
the possibility is now open.

So. In answer to your question. Up until 5-10 years ago, the answer would have been unambiguously
that there are indeed random processes, and that they are fundamental to reality. Now, we know that
we do not know this, and your question cannot be answered.

Steven Ravett Brown