What Dr. Mlodinow says 'random' is what Carl Jung and many others said 'synchronicity'. The difference is that latter attaches meaningfulness to seemingly unrelated events. Physics considers 4 main fields: gravitational, electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear forces and all large bodies follow them and therefore everything is deterministic. When Heisenberg introduced uncertainty at atomic and quantum level the world became probabilistic and Schrodinger made it set of potentials. Philosophies and spirituality believe in many more fields than the above mentioned, such as cosmic, morphic etc. Causal became acausal, temporal became non-temporal and spatial became non-spatial!. When one believes in destiny and inevitable, deterministic world, the question of 'free will' does not arise. Our choices are not all conscious but many are unconscious but still just because we choose we call it 'free will'. Christof Koch says that wherever there is processing of information, even by any hardware let alone human brain, it is consciousness and therefore in case of humans unconscious becomes conscious as brain processes at least some information. Dr. says that if we know behavior of each atom and have control over it then everything will become deterministic until then it is considered random. As everything is not knowable and controllable, events seem mysterious, miraculous, acts of God and unexplained. This is one of the best interviews I have read. Congrats ON BEING.
ORIGINAL COMMENT
What Dr. Mlodinow says 'random' is what Carl Jung and many others said 'synchronicity'. The difference is that latter attaches meaningfulness to seemingly unrelated events. Physics considers 4 main fields: gravitational, electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear forces and all large bodies follow them and therefore everything is deterministic. When Heisenberg introduced uncertainty at atomic and quantum level the world became probabilistic and Schrodinger made it set of potentials. Philosophies and spirituality believe in many more fields than the above mentioned, such as cosmic, morphic etc. Causal became acausal, temporal became non-temporal and spatial became non-spatial!. When one believes in destiny and inevitable, deterministic world, the question of 'free will' does not arise. Our choices are not all conscious but many are unconscious but still just because we choose we call it 'free will'. Christof Koch says that wherever there is processing of information, even by any hardware let alone human brain, it is consciousness and therefore in case of humans unconscious becomes conscious as brain processes at least some information. Dr. says that if we know behavior of each atom and have control over it then everything will become deterministic until then it is considered random. As everything is not knowable and controllable, events seem mysterious, miraculous, acts of God and unexplained.
This is one of the best interviews I have read. Congrats ON BEING.