Foolestroupe

If your 'practical difference' claim simply means that you are confused and assume that 'random causation' "a" always produces 'random outcome' "A"...

Unfortunately, Steve has undermined the idea of cause by arguing that the reason for differing outcomes is different circumstances. It's impossible, to all intents and purposes, for either us or the environment to get identical conditions for both, when you think right down to subatomic particle level. It is impossible for 'random causation' "a" to always produce 'random outcome' "A" because 'random causation' "a" only ever occurs once. The cause and the outcome are inextricably linked.

But now if input "a" always produces a different output ('random' - 'non-deterministic') then we can learn nothing by studying it anyway ...

Rather the point I was trying to make.

unless the output displays a statistical output curve, in which case it is still consistently deterministic.... just that we can only assign a percentage certainty to the outcomes...

That is not what Steve is saying. He posits "a cause for the particular way of recombining".

Only for muddled thinking.

A pity you feel the need to resort to that sort of talk.

You may scoff at the pedantic,

Certainly not!

but if you do not refrain [Ooo er!] from confusing what the terms (words) mean and use one term (word) indiscriminately when there are several semantic concepts (meanings) involved in the arguments ... then ... GIGO.

I'm quite happy with TIA's definition of random (look for it yourself). It's Steve who seems to be working to a different one although I can't quite work out what it is.