Quote:
Originally Posted by Cynical
This is incorrect -- there are machines that use cosmic background radiation as a white-noise generator and, from that, can generate truly random numbers. And, at any rate, if you're doing a proper pseudo-RNG, it's actually pretty easy to involve a human in the loop (I'd be shocked if OOTP isn't using clicks + the system clock to seed a PRNG). Meanwhile, humans are actually terrible at generating randomness or recognizing it. We see patterns in everything, even when there aren't any, and if you ask someone to name a bunch of "random numbers", there's lots of biases that will crop up -- for instance, they're vastly more likely to be odd than even, will likely not be divisible by 5, and will be spread out too much over the total range they're covering (true randomness tends to develop 'clumps').
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I just gave the example of pro athletes. You couldn't have missed that. You don't like it, of course, because it demonstrates what I am saying. But you didn't miss it.
'We see patterns in everything, even when there aren't any.' =
Me: there's a pattern in my closet!
You: no, there isn't
Me: oh
Anyway, cosmic rays etc this is all just getting more refined in hiding the fact that machines are purely rational. Purely rational CANNOT by definition create random events or actions. Purely rational must always be procedural, or it is not purely rational. This is basic ontology.