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This week, I have been thinking a lot about randomness and the role of disorder in emergence and the universe.  The “Ways of Making Sense of the World” exhibit asks whether it is randomness that yields pattern rather than randomness being something that obscures patterns.  The idea of randomness yielding patterns is exemplified by the random motion of atoms that can give rise to recognizable and predictable patterns in the form of molecules or reactions.  The idea of randomness obscuring patterns is what we see in many of the Cellular Automata rules, especially rule 30, which has some areas that create patterns and others that seem random.  Arguments can be made for both ideas.  Either way, I am curious as to why it is, if disorder is so linked to patterns, it is the natural tendency of systems to move from a highly ordered to a less highly ordered state.  I also wonder whether things that we interpret as random are just complex patterns we can’t recognize.  Is it really accurate to say that a system is deterministic, if by saying it is deterministic we mean it behaves the exact same way every time, when it is impossible to know the outcomes of infinite runs of the system.  Is it more accurate to say that something is not behaving non-deterministic?  This is similar to the halting problem we discussed briefly.  We can say that something comes to an end if we observe it doing so, but we can’t safely assume something won’t stop just because it hasn’t yet.  Should we assume that something is deterministic until it is proven non-deterministic, or vice versa, just like we’re supposed to assume someone is innocent until proven guilty?