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 I have with such a claim is that it seems incoherent.

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

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

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

Another idea of randomness is one of complexity, especially of hopeless 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.

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 with that of complexity is that of practical unpredictability. But I think that we can usefully look at things from a different perspective.

After the recognition that space could be usefully conceptualized within a framework of three orthogonal, arithmetic dimensions, there came a recognition that time could be considered as a fourth 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. 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 them, and then pull something from the ashes.

Some authors propose to find the arrow of time in disorder; 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.

One of the implications of this proposition is that time would be macroscopic; 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, rather than specifically absolute, it would be possible for time to be reversed, if a macroscopic system happened to become more orderly.

But I immediately want to ask what it would even mean to be reversed here. Reversal is always relative. The universe cannot be pointed in a different direction, unless by universe one means something other than everything. Perhaps we could have a local system become more orderly, and thus be reversed in time relative to some other, except, then, that the local system doesn't seem to be closed. And, since the propensity to disorder is statistical, it's possible for it to be reversed for the universe as a whole, even if the odds are not only against that but astronomically 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?

But I also have a big problem with notions of disorder. In fact, this heads us back in the direction of notions of randomness.

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, 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. In a very important sense, the cards are always ordered. To describe 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 than that in which they already were.

Time's arrow is not found in real disorder generally, because there is always 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.

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 and with the other in unfamiliar order. Most people would classify the deck in familiar order as ordered and the other as random; and most people would think the ordered deck as more likely straight from the pack than the random deck. Unfamiliar orderings of some things are often the same thing as complex orderings, but the familiar orderings of decks of cards are actually conventional. It's only if we use a mapping from a familiar ordering to an unfamiliar ordering that the unfamiliar ordering seems complex. Yet even people who know 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 of the evolution of orderings that causes us to see the unfamiliar orderings as random. (Note that, in fact, many people insist that unfamiliar things are complicated even when they're quite simple, or that familiar things are simple even when they're quite complex.)

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

(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 of that arrow; it's not a rabbit pulled from a hat.)

[1] Other words that cause the same reäction are probability and capitalism.

On Sunday, I took some more photographs of the entropic balcony:

• viewed from the east
• viewed from the south

Now, if you'll look at the image of the balcony when viewed from the east, then you'll see that the south-eastern support post was attached to the balcony by way of a plate. The plate was affixed using two nails, one top and one bottom. I say was in each case because the displacement of the post has caused its nail to be pulled.

On Friday or on Saturday, the balcony that I keep photographing took another hit. I took some photos last night or this morning: The rough-and-ready repair applied on 20 October was a matter of simply pulling or pushing on the supports in a linear way, and it was none too precisely done. Now, with the south-eastern support and its base twisted, more skill would be required to get things even back to the poor state of 21 October.

Yester-day, a sort of rough-and-ready fix was applied to the balcony supports. Perhaps by the land-lord; perhaps by a desperate tenant; perhaps by an architectural vigilante.

Well, it's still standing, but… Notice that the south-eastern support has now been so displaced that its base is now cocked.

(I earlier posted an image from 14 August and some from 15 September.)

You might recall the balcony whose photo I posted on 14 August. I noticed to-day that in the last month there has been a further decline. Here, showing the bottoms of the two eastern supports, is a detail from a photo taken then: The south-eastern support was the big problem. Here's the base of the north-eastern support: Here's a photo from to-day: The south-eastern support is still the worst of the four, but look at the base of the north-eastern support: The concrete base has been moved a bit, and the wooden post has been further moved in the same direction, so that it's no longer fully on the base.

My guess is that the problem is of the posts repeatedly being hit by vehicles. In any case, unless there's some intervention soon, that balcony isn't likely to stand another month.

The same apartment building that has the doubtful balcony of which I provided a picture on the 14th also has a questionable staircase: In fact. the staircase is collapsing rapidly. Here is a picture from the 18th: with a support having come free of the banister; and here is a picture from the 19th: with the support now lying on the ground.

Nor is this the only problematic staircase of the building. Here is another: This staircase has developed a discernible lean.

The balcony could be quickly repaired. In the short-run, all that is needed is to pull the base of the cocked support back into its original position. And this repair should be effected before the weight of the balcony and of the potted plants on it cause it to fall into the alley, potentially damaging persons or property.

The staircase shown in the first three pictures should be immediately torn-down. It cannot safely be used, nor is there a good way to block access from its base. The other staircase may have some life left to it; but, given that the one needs to be removed quickly, it would probably be most cost-effective to dismantle the other now as well.

The building seems to be crumbling about its tenants. Perhaps some of them simply don't care enough to move, but perhaps others cannot afford a better place. Generally speaking, even a home in such a poor state is better than no home. But eventually the bills will have to be paid, rents will be increased, and some of the tenants may have to leave.