Cybex,
Just because something is generated by deterministic process doesn't mean we can recreate it even if we perfectly understand the underlying processes. The current output of the hypothetical fractal processes may depend on the initial conditions in the past – possibly at the moment of creation of the universe & we can never know these initial conditions so we can never simulate the processes even if we know the equations. A rather nihilistic view point in my opinion but Mandelbrot in particular has championed this viewpoint.
Sealeopard,
These natural phenomena that you refer to, may not be random. From the paradigm that I am coming from, Einstein was right when he said that he did not believe God played with dice & there was something missing in the theory of quantum mechanics & once we found the missing element, randomness would vanish. The random & probabilistic quantum effects that we observe in our real world may actually be generated because we live in a universe with 15 dimensions with all but 4 of the dimensions collapsed. It is the projection of these higher dimensions on our 4 dimensions, which gives the illusion of randomness. The implication here is that these so-called random process may be found to have ‘structure’ by a yet to be developed statistical test. After all, this is the history of the development of random number generators. Each time we develop a new generator that overcomes a previous weakness, someone comes along and points that the new generator has an observable non-random structure. These tests for structure are becoming more & more esoteric each year. It is like peeling an onion with an infinite number of layers.
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Jack
