If the physicists are not receiving random samples of the population of possible observations, then their inferences are also unjustified. And if random processes are impossible because the universe is deterministic . . . my head hurts, but I think raising that problem is changing the subject. I don’t really want to talk about whether counter-factuals (like scientists proposing a different theory than the one actually proposed) are a coherent concept in a deterministic universe.
Is your basic objection to the application of probability theory when it concerns processes other than physically random processes?
That could be, but I’m not familiar with the technical vocabulary you are using. What’s an example of a non-physical random process?
This discusses lots of different interpretations of “random”. The general sense seems to be that a random process is unpredictable in detail, but has some predictable properties such that the process can be modelled mathematically by a random variable (or sequence of random variables).
Here, the notion of “modelling by a random variable” means that if we take the actual outcome and apply statistical tests to check whether the outcome is drawn from the distribution defined by the random variable, then the actual outcome passes those tests. This doesn’t mean of course that it is in an objective sense a random process with that distribution, but it does mean that the model “fits”.
If the physicists are not receiving random samples of the population of possible observations, then their inferences are also unjustified. And if random processes are impossible because the universe is deterministic . . . my head hurts, but I think raising that problem is changing the subject. I don’t really want to talk about whether counter-factuals (like scientists proposing a different theory than the one actually proposed) are a coherent concept in a deterministic universe.
That could be, but I’m not familiar with the technical vocabulary you are using. What’s an example of a non-physical random process?
Maybe take a look at the Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness
This discusses lots of different interpretations of “random”. The general sense seems to be that a random process is unpredictable in detail, but has some predictable properties such that the process can be modelled mathematically by a random variable (or sequence of random variables).
Here, the notion of “modelling by a random variable” means that if we take the actual outcome and apply statistical tests to check whether the outcome is drawn from the distribution defined by the random variable, then the actual outcome passes those tests. This doesn’t mean of course that it is in an objective sense a random process with that distribution, but it does mean that the model “fits”.
Hope that helps...