Random Number Generator That Sees Into the Future

hackajar writes "Red Nova news has an interesting article about a random number generating black box that may be able to see into the future. From the article: "according to a growing band of top scientists, this box has quite extraordinary powers. It is, they claim, the 'eye' of a machine that appears capable of peering into the future and predicting major world events"."

Comments

I think I saw this in a crappy movie once.

[docdude316]

Call Ben Affleck this machine must be destroyed before it causes the destruction of humanity.

Re:Mysterious Future

[TheWanderingHermit]

Why subscribe to Slashdot for that?

Just hook the thing up to a good random number generator, like a good cup of really hot tea. It'll be sure to wipe out those rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty.

Oh, and call it a Seldon box, just for fun.

Re:Mysterious Future

[aldousd666]

that's exactly what I was thinking...

Re:Why is this under science?

[DarkEdgeX]

So, basically, they'll know something happened after it's already happened.

I think they made that breakthrough though with the advent of the newspaper.

The Bible Tells Us So

[jdagius]

This is nothing new. The ancients believed that random events could predict the future:

Jonah 1:7 And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.

It is well known that the collection of "cast lots" is distributed randomly, but the ancients believed that everything happened for a purpose. Thus Jonah cheerfully accepted this random verdict as truth as he was thrown into the whale's belly!

-Johanus

Re:Random number machines predicting the future eh

[roman_mir]

Easy, just build a machine that is calculating Pi decimals, supposedely those are random numbers so they must contain the described sequences and behavior.

Bullshit!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Sounds like a subject for Penn and Teller's Bullshit!

Thoughts by people could influence it -- detected in the '70's! Yet somehow it hasn't been mass produced nor overturned science and our understanding of physics. Curious.