Hypothetical quesiton regarding "randomness"

  On 4/26/2010 at 3:50 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

technically nothing is ever truly random, you can get very close but there's always some bias factor that makes it ever so slightly sequential or predictable.

what? i don't think so. show me some science that backs this up.

nuclear decay-based random number generators will be completely unpredictable and not sequential, unless something is malfunctioning.

How can there be randomness if there exits are limits such as the plank time ?

Also found this

It's done by:

1 - putting the even rows down and the odd rows up

2 - putting the even columns right and the odd columns left.

p.s. : at some point you get back to the original picture.

p.s. : it's called the photo booth transformation

  On 4/26/2010 at 8:13 AM, Babar said:

it's called the photo booth transformation

now that's pretty cool.

  On 4/26/2010 at 8:07 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

  On 4/26/2010 at 7:14 AM, chaosmachine said:

  On 4/26/2010 at 3:50 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

technically nothing is ever truly random, you can get very close but there's always some bias factor that makes it ever so slightly sequential or predictable.

 

what? i don't think so. show me some science that backs this up.

 

nuclear decay-based random number generators will be completely unpredictable and not sequential, unless something is malfunctioning.

but how do you know there's pure randomness occuring? and when I say pure I mean absolute true randomness, not just being something that is very unpredictable. I suspect there's always something operating on a quantum scale within logical mathematical boundaries which affects that nuclear decay, but it would be almost impossible to find out hence we should not assume and instead stick to the laws of mathematics which we know govern everything in the universe.

I understand what you're saying (i think), but even if such thing as true randomness didn't exist the world is complex enough so that we can assume it exists and work with that. you mention mathematics a lot, have you ever considered that mathematics as we use it is a flawed approximation to reality and not a model of it? for instance, the universe as it turns out is most likely discrete and not continuous, yet it is a lot more comfortable to assume it is continuous when we use mathematics to describe it. so it is a lot more simple to work with the mathematics of probability, there is a lot that can be done with it, even if it involves randomness there is a lot of information that can be extracted from random processes.

so what I'm saying is, it doesn't really matter if true randomness really exists or not, (unless you want to get all philosophical and existential), the world is too complex to ever determine all causes for all consequences.

You guys haven't been in the finance industry long enough.

Interesting thread!

But I must also say: its

i would agree that true randomness cannot exist because an event happens as it does explicitly because of the events that led up to it. there is never the possibility of a different result, only the one that has happened, because we are only experiencing one reality. probability is simply making up for lost pieces of information and making informed generalizations that have as much basis in reality as they have context.

perceived randomness is quite common just because we can't analyze all the pieces of every puzzle, as gordo and mgf are saying.

Maybe you need one of this: Quantis RNG

here is a nice paper (only 9 pages ): Experimental Evidence of Quantum Randomness Incomputability

  On 4/26/2010 at 8:58 PM, pera said:

Maybe you need one of this: Quantis RNG

 

here is a nice paper (only 9 pages ): Experimental Evidence of Quantum Randomness Incomputability

We actually use one of these in the ET forum bot.

  On 4/26/2010 at 6:38 PM, theSun said:

i would agree that true randomness cannot exist because an event happens as it does explicitly because of the events that led up to it. there is never the possibility of a different result, only the one that has happened, because we are only experiencing one reality. probability is simply making up for lost pieces of information and making informed generalizations that have as much basis in reality as they have context.

 

perceived randomness is quite common just because we can't analyze all the pieces of every puzzle, as gordo and mgf are saying.

Let me point out quantum mechanics again. events in quantum mechanics exist in a probabilistic state until they are observed. it is not a matter of faulty human measurement. apparently it IS how things are at a quantum level.

Gorgo you keep bringing up quantum mechanics but to me that theory doesn't hold much ground when it comes to "multiple worlds", it's kindof a self fulfilling prophecy and i turn a blind eye to that much like I do with lord of the rings. Ofcoursw for most things there can be some use made of it and for qm I would say the 'randomness' of atoms are useful (e.g atomic clocks). I felt I had to point this out because your going off in that particulary direction and because it's essentially a science fiction theory there is no ground for debate (parallel universe(s)).

Anyway you gus have opened my mind a but and unfortunately like most things it's extremely complicated. I personallly don't think we need to be all that much more intelligent, rather we humans keep working along the theories we've tried and we should get a grip of some randomness in order to predict very small events which may lead to say, transport failures. I think what we do need to evolve to are a) compassion and b) able to naturally think ahead more, for example not smoking straightsto prevent cancer later on or even "don't push nuke button".

once we handle "don't put your mcdonalds cup down on the nuke button" we can move onto tackling "don't push the nuke button"

  On 4/27/2010 at 3:33 AM, joshier said:

Gorgo you keep bringing up quantum mechanics but to me that theory doesn't hold much ground when it comes to "multiple worlds", it's kindof a self fulfilling prophecy and i turn a blind eye to that much like I do with lord of the rings. Ofcoursw for most things there can be some use made of it and for qm I would say the 'randomness' of atoms are useful (e.g atomic clocks). I felt I had to point this out because your going off in that particulary direction and because it's essentially a science fiction theory there is no ground for debate (parallel universe(s)).

 

Anyway you gus have opened my mind a but and unfortunately like most things it's extremely complicated. I personallly don't think we need to be all that much more intelligent, rather we humans keep working along the theories we've tried and we should get a grip of some randomness in order to predict very small events which may lead to say, transport failures. I think what we do need to evolve to are a) compassion and b) able to naturally think ahead more, for example not smoking straightsto prevent cancer later on or even "don't push nuke button".

I was only trying to make a point to those people that believe the world is deterministic. quantum mechanics is a classical example that shows that causality may not govern the universe after all. it's not about parallel universes at all.

never mind.

  On 4/26/2010 at 6:38 PM, theSun said:

i would agree that true randomness cannot exist because an event happens as it does explicitly because of the events that led up to it. there is never the possibility of a different result, only the one that has happened, because we are only experiencing one reality. probability is simply making up for lost pieces of information and making informed generalizations that have as much basis in reality as they have context.

 

perceived randomness is quite common just because we can't analyze all the pieces of every puzzle, as gordo and mgf are saying.

yes that.

sometimes it seems to me that failing to understand nature through the eyes of probability, is that it basically predicts the outcome by reverse-engineering the event, which is basically the same as predicting it. the amount of information given, is equal in both manners.

and with experiments we always add a new variable (or neglect too many). we interact. and that alone distorts the outcome.

it would so like to know- what influence our interactions have on the quantum-level... what is the 'range' in physical terms, like for example, when you just move an arm... i understand it is irrelevantly small, but maybe it has an influence on a different time scale....?