That is just your opinion with nothing to back it up. And it appears that you are in serious error
Umm… if you say so. Happy reading!
AIng:
He doesn’t get “random numbers”. As in any other system, these are pseudo-random numbers, which are seeded by some (hopefully sufficiently) unpredictable process (in Galton’s case, the throw of dice from a garbage can).
No.
Your list is fine but it is not relevant to the question at hand. Your list concerns pseudo random number generation using algorithms.
They are also created by hardware systems.
Nice try. Let’s look at it a certain way:
You’re merely proving the point: it’s not presently possible. It’s not theoretically impossible, though.
I already have.
I’ve already addressed this, too: it’s difficult to define this. Do you have a definition, since you seem to want to assert that you have the answer?
You don’t have a definition. That is where your problem is.
I guess you don’t, either?
So… there you have it. And, oddly enough, it’s pretty much what I said it was, back in the beginning:
A random sequence of numbers is one without order or pattern and which is serially uncorrelated.
I do not believe this to be true and as proof I refer to the gambling tables at the Belagio Hotel and Casino.
Ahh… but how can you demonstrate that there’s no order? And, more to the point, if you’ve only seen r1…ri, then how do you know that there’s not a pattern once ri+1 has been seen?
Then again, if we have an example of something putatively “without order or pattern”, then we have an example of something that’s likewise putatively not deterministic, don’t we? And, if so, then we have a certain sense of clarity that determinism doesn’t hold up to scrutiny… don’t we?
I think you should examine more carefully what they mean by “random”, then.
Hang on, though – there’s a difference between a “series of events” and a “single event”, isn’t there? You seem to be invoking the notion of independent events rather than the notion of a deterministic event.
#1 and #2 could be predicted, if all the variables were understood and calculated. #3 begs the question, since it presumes “random” (name removed by moderator)uts.
Your belief doesn’t come into play. Neither does our current ability to predict events at gambling tables.
You can recognize that you’ve moved the goalposts, right? We weren’t talking about “sequences”…
By the lack of serial correlation or equivalently that the Walsh power spectrum is flat.
The list of numbers obtained from a die toss or from flipping a coin is an example of a sequence.
Sure, but we were talking about a single occurrence. How might you demonstrate that a single die toss provides a “random” result?
One day the topic in one of my college physics classes was the polarization of reflected light. The prof said that light isn’t reflected in the same way that a ball or a sound wave bounces off a wall, but that the incident photon is actually absorbed by an atom in the surface and immediately re-emitted. That astounded me. I asked how, if that were true, the emitted photon could maintain the angle of incidence AND the wave could be polarized to the plane of the surface, given that decay events are usually understood to be both indeterminate and random. His reply was “that’s an excellent question. No one knows, if you want a Nobel Prize figure it out.”
This reminds me of the way that data encryption can yield a data string that appears to be random to everyone who doesn’t have the key, and indeed even to those who have the key but haven’t used it yet. In the case of such a string, to say that it is truly random is to say that there is no key, that there is no underlying order (dare I use the term hypostasis?) which gives meaning to seemingly random events.
That’s right. I think non-determinism only allows for the possibility that a free-agent can determine a physical outcome without being determined by something else. But that only works if the free-agent is not itself a natural part of the physical process, but is instead something that is intervening in the process. If we are entirely governed by the sames rules that are expressed by a non-deterministic system then we cannot choose the outcome. Like you said a non-deterministic physical outcome by itself is random and is not the result of intention.
That us an interesting statement. I suppose I agree. It’s hard to say, since I certainly attribute free will to the soul. If the materialists were right, there us no supernatural, could there be free will? It’s almost impossible for me to imagine such a scenario in order to speculate.
No because you would have to be able to measure the initial conditions perfectly, which is not possible. It is not just a matter of calculation, nor is it just a matter of understanding the variables. There is the problem of the measurement of the initial conditions. The measurement of the initial conditions must come before any calculation is done and of course the initial conditions are changing with each toss of the die. Secondly, because of the uncertainty in the measurement of the initial conditions and because the system has nonlinear components, the chaotic butterfly effect will kick in and there is no way of predicting what the next toss will be. There is no algorithm or key which will give the next number. The results are random, and unpredictable, but they are deterministic since they follow Newton’s laws of motion.
Let me fix that for you: “you would have to be able to measure the initial conditions perfectly, which is not possible with current technology.”
No. It is impossible to measure perfectly because of the uncertainty principle.
Quantum mechanics tells us that a precise measurement with no uncertainty is impossible.
I doubt you are able to fix the uncertainty principle.
Does the Uncertainty Principle actually apply to something as large as a die? Or for that matter anything large enough to see with the naked eye? Genuine question - I always understood that it only applied to what I remember being referred to as sub-atomic particles, but I am more than willing to be educated on this.
It applies to the measurement of the initial conditions or conditions required for the calculation of the result of the toss - such as for example the initial height of the die from sea level (gravitational force on the die) and the initial placement of the die in the cup and the length of time you take to shake the die, the velocity of the die as it is tossed from the cup, etc. None of these quantities can be measured with absolute precision no matter what technology you are using.