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Physicist Uses Laser Light As Fast, True-Random Number Generator
MrKevvy writes
"An Ottawa physicist is using laser light to create truly random numbers much faster than other methods do, with obvious potential benefits to cryptography: 'Sussman's Ottawa lab uses a pulse of laser light that lasts a few trillionths of a second. His team shines it at a diamond. The light goes in and comes out again, but along the way, it changes. ... It is changed because it has interacted with quantum vacuum fluctuations, the microscopic flickering of the amount of energy in a point in space. ... What happens to the light is unknown — and unknowable. Sussman's lab can measure the pulses of laser light that emerge from this mysterious transformation, and the measurements are random in a way that nothing in our ordinary surroundings is. Those measurements are his random numbers.'"
Finally a reason for socially inept people to buy diamonds!
The world's smartest bug zapper www.zapstats.com/kickstarter
9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 ....
You don't KNOW it's not random...
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
I don't believe such a thing can possibly exist.
Of course they can. Here: 7, 3. I've just given you two *totally* random numbers.
There. I said it.
They lost me at "microscopic energy".
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
A diamond bends light (a laser in this case) via reflection rather than quantum vacuum fluctuations? Maybe I'm missing something...
Anyways, I find hardware based cryptography much more scalable and attainable than tfa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_random_number_generator
Also, I've never heard of a hacker trying to reverse engineer an encryption algorithm to break into a system, 0 day IIS exploits on the other hand...
Well, something has to explain what we observe in the lab.
So far, quantum physics is the only successful theory.
I mean, what about a diamond in the middle attack? If you manage to replace it with well known and tweaked diamond, with known quantum effect (you see, i could use funny words too), then all the systems would be jeopardized.
Random enough for me. Truly.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/221/
I just use the rand() function in Excel. Way less hassle than firing a laser through a diamond...
conservation of information would say that if we could measure and analyze your subconscious, your experiences, your neural connections to a high enough degree that we could uncover the reasoning for your random number picks, and probably even predict the next "random" numbers you come up with.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Well, there are things about the universe for which we have no explanation other than 'it's random'. Stuff where the internal state, if any, is hidden from us in pretty fundamental ways. If your opponent has to surround your laser experiment with a jupiter scale atom smasher in order to determine what you're going to get, that's pretty securely random.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The Old One Doesn't Play Dice
Since this is a random number generator deriving random number off of the uncertainty principal all I want to know is where can I get one.
"the measurements are random in a way that nothing in our ordinary surroundings is"
Nonsense. They are random in precisely the same way that a good bouncy roll of the dice are. They are random in precisely the same way that a temperature measurement of a cup full of boiling water 10 seconds after it is poured is. They are random in precisely the same way that the sound coming out of a piezoelectric microphone taped to a car window travelling at 60 MPH is. They are random in precisely the same way that the noise of a reverse-biased silicon junction is.
Perhaps the author meant to say "the measurements are random in a way that no pseudorandom number generator algorithm is."
This guy better be real careful with his analysis..... A lot of things you'd think are not correlated actually are. For instance, the intensity of starlight arriving at two separated telescopes has been found to be quite correlated!
I also wonder if he's pushing the principle of induction a bit far.... He may find the light is random, but what if a cosmic ray goes through the diamond and all the atoms go Boooonnnnngggg! in resonance together, won't that mess up his perfect randomness? I don't see much use for a random generator that might randomly spazz out into putting out patterns.
Finally a reason for socially inept people to buy diamonds!
I dunno about that. Diamond video cards were okay.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Not me, but the post. Why is it in IT/Management when it should be in Science?
The newspaper article is not giving any information that is not already included in the summary.
The paper is published in Optics Express, the abstract can be read here. The full article is behind a paywall unfortunately. The author claim that this concept could deliver random numbers at a rate of 100 GHz which is quite fast compared to other true random number generators out there that are based on thermal noise, radiation or other processes.
"An Ottawa physicist is using laser light to create truly random numbers much faster than other methods do, with obvious potential benefits to cryptography"
Even faster, use neutrinos!
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2011/11/22/faster-than-light-neutrinos-confirmed-in-one-way-yes-in-another-no/
Or? Maybe the answer is random? Truly random!
Do not look at random numbers with remaining eye.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
That's the point though--just because we don't have an explanation doesn't make it random--it may be apparently random, but that irks me in the same way that people drop off the "known-" or "observable-" in front of "universe".
Also "securely random" implies an application for which these "apparently random" numbers are "good enough"...
A while back, the Simtec Entropy Key was making the rounds among Debian Devs, and claims to be exploiting quantum effects in the P-N junctions to be a true RNG.
They seem serious and I tend to trust paranoid Debian developers' opinions, but ultimately I don't have enough knowledge myself to make a confident judgment call. I'd be curious about more opinions.
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
A lot of tools have diamond blades.
I knew you were going to post that...
I agree that the numbers are random, in the sense that they're subject to chance, but how confident are they that they know the sampling distribution? That is, can you use this method to generate a random sample a with uniform distribution, or a gamma distribution, or anything else you'd like to use random numbers for?
With quantum observation errors, I wonder if they're assuming the sampling distribution is normal, in which case they'd have to do some work to convert it to give the kind of output that rand() gives. Problems would likely show up in the tails of the distribution (near 0 and 1). TFA doesn't mention any of the statistical issues, only the physics ones.
'Sussman's Ottawa lab uses a pulse of laser light that lasts a few trillionths of a second. His team shines it at a diamond. The light goes in and comes out again, but along the way, it changes. ... It is changed because it has interacted with quantum vacuum fluctuations, the microscopic flickering of the amount of energy in a point in space. ... What happens to the light is unknown — and unknowable.
Sounds very much like xray crystallography which discovers all kinds of interesting things about the crystalline matrix.
Would be hilarious if they discover via non-random results there is, after all, some inherent crystaline like order to the quantum vacuum. Or even funnier if they knew it all along, and some TLA agency paid them to try and pass it off as random, cloaked in a lot of new age zero point energy stuff.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Can it generate pi? Wow.
Shine on you random diamond.
Unlike easily predicted phenomena like radioactive decay and thermal noise?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Incorrectly applying the conservation of information. What you are saying wouldn't work and would violate the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. What would happen is as you did the measurements to that degree you would lose information on the motion of the particles involved as you gained the new information on the position hence the conservation of information. The uncertainty of the choices would still exist and you'd most likely get two different results if his choice had any quantum affects involved.
Of course they can. Here: 7, 3. I've just given you two *totally* random numbers.
Nope. And I can prove it. Both of your numbers were between 0 and 9, inclusive. Counting only integers that makes ten possibilities. Now, between 10 and 999, inclusive, there are nine hundred ninety possibilities. Since random numbers are equally likely that means that it is ninety-nine times more likely for a random number to be between 10 and 999, inclusive, than it is for them to be between 0 and 9, inclusive. Successive probabilities multiply, so the likelihood that two numbers chosen at random will be between 10 and 999 inclusive are 8991 times more likely than that they will be between 0 and 9, inclusive. The only reasonable conclusion is that 7 and 3 are not random numbers.
~Loyal
p.s. I think if you search the literature you'll find that 3 is, in fact, a random number. Therefore you problem lies with the 7.
I aim to misbehave.
Yeah, well I got my own problems with this "reality" thing you speak of...
did you know I was going to post this? http://xkcd.com/221/
A Heiselber's Uncertainty Principle attacks!
It says "hello"!
It is very effective!
That was what Einstein thought. So he set up a thought experiment to prove that quantum was only apparently random, called the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky paradox. Turned out, after Aspect ran the experiment, that Einstein was wrong. Reality was more random than he thought. It still might be the case that there's an order behind the quantum randomness, but that's currently more an article of faith than scientific insight.
The term "random" is generally (even in science, from what I know of it) taken to refer to things which we are not able to predict, even theoretically. We do not, however, know for sure if the system is non-deterministic (that is, truly random) or only apparently so.
Again, not a quantum physicist. But I believe that is the general state of affairs. See Wikipedia for more.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
When it comes to true random devices, I've coded some micro-controllers to add random numbers based on key-presses from humans, picture someone pressing the button when a 24 mhz timer runs mad, no human that I know of - can repeat press the button so accurately that it hits the same number at a 0.00001th of a second more or less.
When no human interaction is required, I use an insanely accurate temperature sensor, no temperature, not even placed in a professional fridge with 0.01c accuracy can get the same results each time. Mix this with a spinning/running timer, and you've got yourself a winner! ;)
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I was just hoping someone posted that :D
Buanzo Consulting - 15 Years of GNU/Linux experience, for you.
how is the likeness of the numbers showing up making them less random? 7, 3 is as random as 494592349943, 2.5
use Monte Carlo method
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
While there are other random number generators, by far and away the most common "random number generator" is the Linear congruential generator.... the typical one that is used for most video games due to the fact that it can be configured using only integer-based arithmetic operations (no need for floating point overhead). That makes the generator extremely fast, but unfortunately predictable. Sadly, lousy constants are usually picked with many operating system vendors or compiler writers which make this rather poor generator even worse.
The problem is that the very non-random nature of the generator can show up when you are using it for very precise calculations or for something that doesn't take into the fact that the LCG algorithm really is just a simply line slope formula applied in an unusual context and with some constraints. There is certainly a need for better algorithms to generate numbers that avoid these problems, and if you can get these numbers from nature it makes the issue even better.
Still, I agree with the grandparent post that the physical phenomena being used is going to be influencing the results of the number generator in some fashion.... it will just be more disguised. In the past census data was used to generate "random number tables", which also has drawbacks of its own.
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
Ian Ameline
The Commodore 64 could produce random numbers by sampling the white noise generator in the SID audio chip. They probably weren't as random as shining a laser through the diamond but I wonder if the difference is enough to matter...
Indeed, and that's why I described it as a "belief" of mine, and not a fact.
You can believe what you want, but it doesn't change the way the Universe works. Sure, we may find out that the roots of uncertainty lie only in our ignorance, but it does not seem likely that that is the case. I mean, Einstein spent a good chunk of his life trying to prove your hypothesis, as he did not like the idea of uncertainty and randomness, but he only ended up massively proving quantum mechanics.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
So they don't pass your statistical test. That doesn't prove they aren't random. What if he only gave numbers between 0-9? What if the distribution of his numbers is not uniform?
Is this really something that could be reduced in size to something that fits in a computer? The article didn't say what scale his equipment is - square kilometer or square inch?
Looking for a job in Portland, Oregon?
Big advantages of this is that it requires no outside information source, inexpensive and could be miniaturized to fit on an extension card. Then we all could put a random card next to our graphics card in our machines.
Finally a reason for socially inept people to buy diamonds!
Industrial grade diamonds are cheap. They are already found in various consumer gadgets that geeks may already have. :-)
"Matter is built on flaky foundations. Physicists have now confirmed that the apparently substantial stuff is actually no more than fluctuations in the quantum vacuum."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16095-its-confirmed-matter-is-merely-vacuum-fluctuations.html
Everything is random.
"The Higgs field is also thought to make a small contribution, giving mass to individual quarks as well as to electrons and some other particles. The Higgs field creates mass out of the quantum vacuum too, in the form of virtual Higgs bosons. So if the LHC confirms that the Higgs exists, it will mean all reality is virtual."
And if it's all virtual who or what is running the simulation? Or maybe it's self generating "I am because I think I am"
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I knew you were going to say that.
Wow, for one integer to be picked is infinitely rare, but two?!?! And both positive primes near zero... Wait a tic... those have all the markings of a psychologically random number! Sadly, it's impossible to say that's how they were selected, as they're just as likely to occur as anything else from a uniformly distributed random number generator over all possible numbers. Only Laplace's demon knows for sure...
Now we need a cool name for it. How about:
Zero Point Entropy
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
"Truly random numbers". I don't believe such a thing can possibly exist.
It is far easier to believe when you are dealing with quantum physics rather than classical physics.
Oh yeah baby... back with my VLB Diamond Viper 4MB of VRAM... and a 486DX-2 66 with 16MB I was styling'. The chicks just couldn't stay away.
You must have been rolling in the dough back then to have 16MB ram. 8MB about broke my bank.
Maybe read up on it, it was a little bit more involved than running the experiment for half an hour.
I just use the rand() function in Excel. Way less hassle than firing a laser through a diamond...
But not nearly as much fun. :-)
> You can believe what you want, but it doesn't change the way the Universe works.
Fine by me -- let me know when you have complete and total understanding of the entire universe...
Time and time again scientists have stated "this is as deep as it goes!" only to be proven incorrect later on...
Thanks for posting about the Simtec Entropy Key. At only $56 (Qty 1) for a FIPS-140-2 Level 3 compliance type device based on quantum tunnels is pretty amazing. Just the buzz words, are worth that for any system advertised as secure.
"the measurements are random in a way that nothing in our ordinary surroundings is"
Nonsense. They are random in precisely the same way that a good bouncy roll of the dice are.
No. The bouncy dice are describable by classical physics. Our inability to predict is based upon our imprecise understanding of the path of the dice, their rotation, air density and movement, the geometry of the area landing in and bouncing about in, the understanding of the materials of the dice and objects it is bouncing against, etc.
In contrast this new method utilizes effects of quantum physics. That is inherently far less measurable and predictable.
Yeah I was a spoiled brat.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Random number generation is used in applied cryptography. That's the application for which it is useful to have a source of random numbers that can't be guessed by a sufficiently well funded opponent. In this case, it might be literally impossible for any opponent to be well-funded enough to defeat this.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I think basically everyone in the gaming biz is now using MT, which is a very good PRNG.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
We don't have a complete and total understanding of the Universe, but that doesn't make fairies any more likely to be real. More importantly, I think that the burden of proof ought to be on those that are making a claim contrary to our current understanding; you need to prove that there is an underlying order to the Universe. Right now, that doesn't seem to be the case. I would absolutely be open to evidence that suggests that our current understanding is mistaken, but until we see it, it is just empty speculation.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Really? No randomness? What if the universe conspired to make it completely impossible for us mere mortals to ever predict a number? This is what quantum physics tells us is happening.
As an example of an impossible to predict situation the universe made two copies of itself at a point where you choose a direction to turn (a simplification of the many-worlds hypothesis). One copy is where you make the decision to turn left and one where you make a decision to turn right. Just before the copy was made how would you have predicted which way you would have turned? No matter what prediction you make you'll be wrong in one of those universes. It's impossible to predict.
Quantum physics is impossible to predict. No amount of hidden variables can explain Bell inequalities. The only thing physicists are looking for now is an explanation of why it's impossible to predict. The many-worlds hypothesis is one such explanation.
What happens to the light is unknown — and unknowable.
It's knowable or else we couldn't measure it to generate random numbers.
Whether it's predictable is another matter entirely, and I'm almost positive that it isn't.
Finding God in a Dog
Of course such thing can not exist, if you are to mean 100% certain by 'true'. But nothing for the human being is 100% certain, for we gather knowledge by observation and induction, both of which have their limits. Then it makes sense to rethink what is the purpose of the word 'true'. Something in the lines of 'beyond reasonable doubt, YMMV'.
FCKGW 09F9 42
Okay, fair enough. Is there any basis for this belief other than that you like it to be the case that the universe is deterministic? I sometimes like the universe to be a lollypop. It seldomly is. I'm saying this just to be an ass I guess, but still: why would this belief of yours be valuable, if it is backed by fact nor theory? Many people like to believe that a supreme being exists that wants to be friends with them. Is your belief in that category, or is there more to it?
Dilbert did it first, and better.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-10-25/
Reality? You doubt the existence of random numbers and your own reality? I would understand doubting one or the other but believing in determinism is the path to believing in an underlying reality. Uncertainty and randomness are the basis of doubting that an absolute underlying reality exists. Are you trying to have your cake and eat it too?
Socially inept people are the only ones who ever had to buy diamonds.
Think about it.
If I believed that our entire reality was actually a simulation being run in a higher level universe, why wouldn't I expect complete determinism?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
You're just defining the word "random" out of existence then. What's the point of having words in a language if people try to make it so that we can never, ever use them?
So, it's random as far as Aspect can tell.
We'll get true randomness as soon as that last digit for pi is discovered.
There is no random. There is only random enough.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You must have been rolling in the dough back then to have 16MB ram. 8MB about broke my bank.
Well, I had a T5200 portable which had 14MB RAM (its maximum) along with a 100MB disk. It had a 20MHz 386 which had the protected-mode bug which was only supposed to affect 16MHz chips (maybe Toshiba just overclocked it) and a 387 chip, too. It also only had the lousy orange plasma VGA display, because they didn't release the color VGA LCD until a year later. Damn thing was built like a tank, and survived repeatedly being accidentally dropped onto concrete - impossible to kill the thing. It cost a few thousand, but hardly broke the bank.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Probably because he has a low threshold of tolerance for ambiguity and error in general. It's rather irritating to consider the probability that the universe is random when one prefers order.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
As a card-carrying atheist I don't believe in a space-genie either. When things one generally holds to be true are not currently provable with the knowledge one (we as humanity) has, that does not make them invalid nor meaningless. Nor does it require a space-genie. One is free to hold beliefs, and even to actively pursue their validation or invalidation. Einstein did this, in this very realm we are discussing. As I posted in another part of this thread, science has frequently believed "this is as deep as it goes!" only to be proven incorrect later on. I for one am not arrogant enough to believe that there cannot be some underlying deterministic cause for the phenomena we currently recognize as "random". And I would not respect the scientist who holds otherwise--but I would respect the scientist that believes there can exist phenomena without underlying deterministic cause.
So you've gone with the later option. Even a simulation of a reality if reality exists would exist in that reality. My Video Games maybe just a simulation but they are also really just files and data ether in ram or on disk. They really do exist in my observed reality just not from the perspective in the game but from my perspective. If I'm just a simulation then I really do exist in a reality somewhere. However, as a programmer, this simulated reality is an big waste of computational power. It takes far more power to track down a probability waves position and interference in a probability wave as quantum physics outlines then it would have been to just implement a Newtonian version of reality.
Our current understanding is based upon theories over currently available observations. Again, I am not making a "claim", I am expressing a "belief". And I would argue that assuming there can't be an underlying cause for what we currently are observing is itself just empty speculation...
why would this belief of yours be valuable
Who said it was valuable? And "valuable" is subjective, anyway.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Those measurements are HIS random numbers. ;)
ps: IANAC
If there are infinite universes, then there is a universe where engineers build random number generators, and they always produce this sequence. The scientists struggle to come up with some theory as to why random number generators can't be built. It's not because they aren't random, it's just that they happen to produce this sequence whenever they're built in that universe.
For extra grins and giggles, there is a universe next door where the 9,9,9... random number generator on display at the science museum in the capitol of Earth mysteriously produces a 6 one day, and the world is thrown into a panic that it portends the apocalypse.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If bouncy things were not competitive as a source of random information, then someone would be able to predict lottery powerball drawings, which are indeed governed by bouncy balls.
This is my sig.
Not really, the universe may indeed possess truly inherently random phenomena -- my *belief* may be wrong--that is why it is a "belief"... However, we have words for many concepts that provably do not exist, yet the words still have value...
Well from that perspective, one cannot reasonably doubt reality. Without reality, there can be no doubt.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
But Einstein proposed a way to test it and he was proven wrong with the EPR paradox. To Einstein and Scientists Data is King, and it would be interesting to know what Einstein would have said after the test was done. What you are proposing isn't like Einstein at all and is more like the Space-Genie hypothesis. Science also doesn't believe that "this is as deep as it goes!" otherwise why put any effort into the LHC, Opera, Fermi Lab, or the numerous other labs trying to go deeper? Every Scientist knows that Einsteins Relativity is wrong and that the Standard model is wrong but they are the best we have right now.
I think it's an interesting discussion, determinism. It seems to underlie most of western physics, up to the point when quantum mechanics came to the scene. We're still recovering from that. My question is really about the underlying motivation for the belief. Is it philosophical? Is it because of some sense of mathematical elegance? Is it literate? I am for instance fine with randomness: at the moment our understanding is that the universe is random, but still causal. 100 years ago, we thought it was fully deterministic. Our understanding of causality has changed, although we really don't understand much of it. Determinism is passe. Why is determinism important? Why is it even desirable? I don't see it. But then again, I see poetic beauty in a universe where order and predictability arise from a chaos and randomness. But I am weird that way.
You have to be trolling. There is no way you believe that you can prove two numbers are non-random.
I've looked at your post 8 times so far, and it always returns 7 and 3 as random numbers. It's not so random when it always returns the same predictable values.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Actually I wasn't arguing anything at all -- I was stating a belief.
And relevance is in the eye of the beholder, I for one (and probably most physicists) would love to know whether or not the underlying system is deterministic...
As to your semantics, maybe the phrase should be "relatively random" (meaning hierarchically relative, not "somewhat/slightly random")...
To answer your question, yes, it is philosophical in nature. However several posters here have been attempting to attribute to me a "desire for determinism". I have no such thing, and randomness has never bothered me conceptually. I think most people (especially non-scientists) fully embrace randomness. I am simply not convinced it truly exists. I am willing to be proven wrong, and to me, inherently random phenomena would make things a *LOT* easier...
Attributed to Boltzmann, "There are many kinds of order, but only one kind of disorder"
Randomness would have the joint probabilities of every possible pair of outcomes over every possible pair of spacings to approach 1/2 exactly. Let's see that data set please.
"No reason to believe that there is" != "Can't be"
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
I picture a physicist struggling for 5 years to get a consistent response shining a laser through a diamond when someone makes a flippant remark about a random number generator...
Randomness is often considered to be an unpredictable pattern, but what is and isnt predictable is dependent on knowledge, so its not an absolute truth.
Randomness is really just an unrecognized pattern, its subjective , what seems random to one person may not be to another.
e.g. Im sure there are people (maybe children) that consider the tides to be random, they dont have the knowledge and experience to see the pattern.
So, any sufficiently advanced pattern is indistinguishable from randomness.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
You're both spoiled! I had 4Mb and only 2Mb on the card and thought I was kicking! Funny now when I have 8Gb on my netbook and the same on my desktop to think about how I spent more for a tiny couple of Mb of RAM back then than I did for my whole netbook now. I'll never forget though the first time I loaded up my Voodoo in my spanking new 133Mhz and loaded Unreal, I swear me and my friends just watched that opening demo for ages going "ooooh!". Man we were easily entertained back then.
as for TFA I never understood why getting a random number always seemed to be so hard, just take all the scores off the sports page, multiple by that last winning powerball numbers, then divide by how many pepperonis you got on your last pizza. Easy peasy!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Well they have a good reason to as this NSFW poster illustrates. Personally I don't see why DeBeer's don't just cut out the bullshit and make that the slogan. I'm sure many of us would appreciate the honesty.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
In classic mechanics, the universe is held to be deterministic, so nothing is "truly random." But in quantum mechanics there is uncertainty, so true randomness does exist.
P.S. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is actually a mathematical theorem. So assuming you believe in mathematics, you should only reject quantum uncertainty if the underlying premise that energy exists in discrete quantities does such violence to your intuitions, that you cannot accept the mountains of empirical evidence in its favor. But if that is the case you are saying that energy exists at infinitely discrete increments. But this just reintroduces the idea that energy levels can be unknowable.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
It's just memoized. They were truly random the first time you've read the post - honest!
If you want a couple more random numbers, all you have to do is ask for another post. For the sake of convenience (to save a roundtrip), here are some more: 5, 9, 7.
I believe the universe is deterministic. I dont need to prove anything to anyone to hold that belief.
Technically, there's no evidence either way whether the universe is "really random", nor is that particularly relevant to current theory. What we have tons of evidence for is that it's "apparantly random" at the smallst scale we have data for. But then, there's so much scale unexplored between the scale of the standard model and Plank scale that almost anything could be going on down there - any claims about Plank scale happenings, which is where the universe would be "really anything" are empty speculation in either direction.
There's room enough for both "really random" and "really deterministic but apparantly random" underlying theories to be true, and no reason but personal preference to select one or the other belief.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It has also been standardized in C++ standard library as part of TR1 (and now also C++11) - std::mersenne_twister_engine, and specifically std::mt19937. VC++ also typedefs it as std::default_random_engine (while g++ uses MINSTD for the same).
I can put away that cup of really hot tea.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
OK, if we want to talk about fun hardware:
A DX2 66 486 with 64MB RAM, two 1GB SCSI disks and a CDROM with a 4MB VRAM card. But, that was just the desktop machine. It only clocked in at about $8K (work really sprung for that one) Then there was the decked out Indigo 2. Don't recall the RAM, but the MIPS 4400 upgrade was around 8K alone, and that was small potatoes compared to the $25K 256 layer Z-buffer video card that was added in. That's right - $25K for a video card that today is probably outpaced by pretty much anything you pull out of the recycling pile. And it was the low price of $25K because we bought 2 in a bundle with the upgrades. Originally they went for $38K.
Of course, all of those prices are totally blown away by the $8K 430MB WORM drive we purchased. To truly get how expensively stupid this purchase was, you have to understand how WORM drives operate. They basically had their own controller internally that worked with the internal hardware to position the write/read head as you progressed along the spiral. The problem was, there was no segmentation of the disk, no error correction, no guide tracks, or anything else. So, the entire process was based on the head placement mechanism being in the right place at the right point of the spin to write/read the data. The problem was, these parts would wear, so a disk was good across about 250-400 read-write cycles of the drive. Read that again - the drive could only be used less than 250 times reliably between the writing of a disk and the current reading. After 250, it got dicey, after 400, you could no longer read it. Oh, and just to compare it to today's BD disks, a WORM disk at the time sold for roughly $100 a piece in lots of 100.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
My computer is non deterministic; it gives me random answers.
I would please like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Then I could use it to populate my IV values safely and randomly.
Off the top of my head, I think this would work as a definition of what's expected of "random": the limit of the proportion of the number of a number's occurrence to the total number of samples taken as the number of samples taken approaches infinity for all numbers in the sample space are equal, and there does not exist a dominant strategy for guessing the next sampled number. Basically, each number has an equal chance of appearing, and there is no optimal way to predict any one number, which is all anyone would ask of a fair RNG.
FYI, that photo was inspired by (but definitely not taken from!) an old Family Guy episode.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
I would please like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Then I could use it to populate my IV values safely and randomly.
Some more random values for you: 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7,7, 7, 7
Every Scientist knows that Einsteins Relativity is wrong and that the Standard model is wrong but they are the best we have right now.
FWIW, all models are wrong... always and necessarily. They are not reality, they are models. Observation may be correct, but any attempt to model what is observed will always remain what it actually is: only a model.
The Admin and the Engineer
you just HAD to be "that" guy didn't you....
Quantum number generators produce random numbers that are measurably different from those that computer programs generate.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25041/
The results show that the sequence generated by Quantis is easily distinguishable from the other data sets. This say Calude and co, is evidence that quantum randomness is indeed incomputable. That means that it could not have been be generated by a computer.
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
Sharks with lasers... and diamonds!
I find it fascinating that in spite of evidence like this pointing to the pervasive effects of QM, people still believe consciousness is unaffected by it (and has no effect on it).
Your brain is not a computer.
Just because we can't know a position and vector of a particle now doesn't mean we won't ever be able to.
Yes it does. The Heisenburg uncertainty principle is not a limitation of technology. It's a law of the universe. It's like saying "just because gravity exists today doesn't mean it will exist sometime in the future."
A lot of tools have diamond blades.
Huh? +4 informative? I've been absent from /. for a good 5 years, but in my day that comment would have looked like
A lot of tools have diamond blades.
It still might be the case that there's an order behind the quantum randomness, but that's currently more an article of faith than scientific insight.
The randomness in quantum mechanics is interpretation, not evidence. What the experiment ruled out wasn't a deterministic universe, but local hidden variables, you can still have a deterministic universe with non-local hidden variables, see Bohm interpretation.
I've looked at your post 8 times so far, and it always returns 7 and 3 as random numbers. It's not so random when it always returns the same predictable values.
What a wonderful life it must be to see everything in a consistent base. If it weren't for slashdot's threading I wouldn't have been able to tell what post you were replying to.
Tim
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
How can there be a last digit of pi? If you think about it, the question "what is the last digit of pi?" doesn't make sense even if you're not a mathematician. Mathematically there are an infinite number of points around a circle. Therefore, as pi depends on that, there are an infinite number of decimal places in pi. Now, in reality there may indeed be a physical limit to how many points may lie upon that circle and in that case the precision of pi would end at x decimal places and if that were the case then the last digit of pi would truly exist.
We'll get true randomness as soon as that last digit for pi is discovered.
I bet one billion dollars that the last digit of pi isn't 0.
You obviously did not study quantum mechanics.
1/ are they truly random numbers, that is do they pass all the statistic tests of distribution? If I remember correctly quantum phenomenon are unpredictable, but are they truly random in the distributive sense, or do they have some numbers that are more likely to appear than others? It would seem that even if quantum phenomena are truly random, nonetheless the physical structure of the diamond would give a bias to one set of phenomena than another.
2/ This kind of randomness is actually pretty useless for cryptography, especially as these randoms will be impossible to verify or debug. One of the most important properties of the random function is that it gives a predictable series so that you can start your program knowing in some degree the values. To generate more 'randomness' you change the seed to the function, not the function itself.
I remember once that a certain company thought about using the microphone as a random number generator, assuming that the noise about the computer was 'random'. What they forgot is that most parts of the computer make a very cyclic noise (for example the fan), which led to some very bad security holes. What this experiment is doing could be nothing more than a certain optical noise that might not be in fact be statistically random.
unknowable
Phhhsh, physicians and your imprecise science.
I believe you guys are throwing the term "unknowable" a bit lightly. I'm pretty sure its knowable, and even predictable, just very very VERY complicated. But not infinitely complicated. Therefore I demand you provide a rigorous demonstration that the process of it is unknowable(or unpredictable, exclude the semantic piss)
I remember very clearly a theorem during college that was proven beyond doubt is demonstrable, but was never demonstrated yet. Mathematics FTW!
that's brilliant !
-- no sig today
A, there you are sergeant pedantic...
ics
But hackable: one cold set her up with a *nix box. That'll get the Windows support calls down to 0.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
that's
This is exactly the effect driving /. .
You would hope so. Most of the programmers that often use these libraries don't pay attention to these details, and there have been some abysmal records on the actual implementation of these kind of libraries in real compilers as opposed to specifications and supposed standards.
For those who are real computer scientists as opposed to coders, it matters and it is useful to know what the actual algorithm that is being done to generate the results. The LCG is often used as the benchmark of comparison to other algorithms, because it is very fast and uses a minimum of operations (integer multiplication followed by addition and modulus can be treated as defacto by simply using an unsigned integer and ignoring overflow) while most other algorithms are by far and away much more complex. If you are interested in optimizing a game and really don't care about the "randomization" other than as a cute trick to make a critter go one way then another, LCG really is the way to go and certainly was the standard algorithm for almost all 8-bit and 16 bit systems that I've ever seen (where the source code is usually closer at hand for the compilers or even interpreters). Where most of the implementations get it really bad is choosing horrible values for the multiplier so you get very small periods (some as small as about five or six numbers with a bad seed), while good values can give you at least MAXINT possible values and periods between new numbers. Most of the "improved algorithms" you are citing here attempt to improve upon that by creating more than MAXINT periods and attempt to avoid linear relationships between pairs of numbers.
If games are using something other than an LCG, I hope they do consider the computational penalties they are making when selecting that other algorithm. Depending on the game, it may very well be one of the most frequently used library functions in that game.
Most of the other algorithms usually are bench marked against the LCG in terms of comparing "randomness" and other factors, but they are all compromises in one way or another. That is also my point, that you need to know what it is that you are using. There certainly is a role to be played by depending upon statistical uncertainty in nature to be used as a means to generate random numbers, which is why this particular technique of using a laser to generate those numbers is so promising. There may be some "structure" in the random nature of the results, so the concern is valid that there might not be any "quick fix" to the problem either. Finding genuine "random numbers" may be an illusive goal. If you are trying to do research into quantum effects (aka simulating a Q-bit or doing quantum mechanical simulations), it is by far and away much more important to stay away from most of the other random number generators and certainly anything that uses the concept of an algorithm approach with a numeric seed or seeds.
Even the process of finding a good seed to start a series is usually simply a variant of applying get_time() (or some other similar function) and somehow applying that directly into the algorithm to start the period. That works fine for single player games, but it might be a problem if everybody in a whole network is starting at the same time, and therefore on the very same period and point in that period for all calculations being used. Again, most programmers that I've met and dealt with simply treat the standard library as a black box and don't care about these implementation details, thinking that the numbers are as random as the laser generation device. Poor choices of random number generators has shown up in scientific research where better algorithms or even numbers generated by nature should have been used, but were instead ignored or not even addressed in the results on the assumption that the compiler writers got it right and they don't need to "reinvent the wheel".
Why are these things always advertised as having huge benefits? There is absolutely no need for new true random generators, the ones we have are completely sufficient. And they are cheap, unlike this discovery that would also take at least a decade to become usable in practice and very likely be far, far too expensive. What the practical problem is at this time (and has been for some time now) is that people do not understand how to use entropy generators right.
I am sick and tired of these stupid stories.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You have to be trolling. There is no way you believe that you can prove two numbers are non-random.
If he believes (as he seems to imply) that the set from which the two numbers are from is the set of positive integers (which is infinite), and that the random samples are uncorrelated, then it indeed seems very likely that those numbers are not random. Then there is also the subtle difference between "prove logically" and "prove statistically" which both often shorten to just "prove".
Then again, the set could as well be {3, 7}.
GPP didn't specify the distrubution. They could come from a d10.
How long time do you have to shake a die for quantum fluctuations to make the result (quantum) random? It might be surprisingly small. IIRC, applying Heisenbergs uncertainty principle to a pencil standing on it's tip shows that within 15 seconds, it will drop.
So how many microseconds until the complete works of Shakespeare show up?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
No amount of hidden variables can explain Bell inequalities.
No amount of LOCAL hidden variables can explain the Bell inequalities.
Isn't the universe deterministic in the many-world interpretation? Every option will always be tried, even though people residing in the universe can not experience that.
You have just provided an excellent example of a human number bias. Humans are most likely to use the numbers 3 and 7 when asked to come up with numbers, random or otherwise. This can actually be used when for instance investigating financial reports to see if they have been doctored. If there is a unlikely large (statistically speaking) nr of 3s and 7s these can be marked suspect.
Of course it didn't break the bank. If you wanted to do that you should have thrown it through the window instead of dropping it onto concrete.
I was joking. Of course there cannot be a last digit of pi. That was the point.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The problem with that sort of thinking is that we as humans are really good at seeing patterns, so we look for them in any data we have. This is the danger with making a hypothesis after seeing the data. After all, his argument could apply to any set of numbers, and at no point does he state the assumptions you make in your post.
To me, it boils down to this question :
"Is there only one future?"
Let's agree we cannot get more information about a system than what the uncertainty principle allows. Fair enough, mere mortals will never be able to get enough information to predict the future, and everything will stay more or less random.
Still, if there's only one future, then it's unique, it's well-defined and therefore not random.
Are quantum mechanics and fate really incompatible?
While you're right to point out that there's no "last digit of pi", the following reasoning is flawed:
Mathematically there are an infinite number of points around a circle. Therefore, as pi depends on that, there are an infinite number of decimal places in pi.
If that were valid, by the same argument I could say: Mathematically there are an infinite number of points in a square. Therefore, as square roots depend on that, there are an infinite number of decimal places in any square root. But then 2 = sqrt(4) would violate that.
The reason that there's infinitely many decimal digits isn't because there are infinitely many points on a circle (what would it mean for there not to be infinitely many points in a continuous curve segment?). It's because pi is an irrational number - indeed this means there's infinitely many digits using any integer number base.
Oh, and besides, we should be talking about tau rather than pi.
I think you meant Brillant, Paula
Damn that site used to be funny (read: it's not anymore)
My Dad bought a NeXT cube when I was a teenager.
At some point, he decided to get a RAM upgrade. He had the choice between 32MB and 64MB, and he went with the 64MB, but it wasn't much of a choice, since they *cost the same amount*. For some reason, the upgrade cost was per SIMM, irrespective of the actual amount of RAM on it.
As I recall, it was several thousand dollars. But that was hardly relevant for a computer that cost $15000 out of the box (CDN).
To this day, it was one of the finest, most responsive machines I've ever used (and is responsible for my switch to OS X). It could do so much on 25MHz; it makes me sad about how little I can do with 2.8GHz. :/
It cost a few thousand, but hardly broke the bank.
Even today "a few thousand" for a computer is a hell of a lot of money for most people, as you're well into the secondhand car league there. Twenty years ago you must have been able to buy a new car for that.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You have to be trolling. There is no way you believe that you can prove two numbers are non-random.
It's rather more likely he was joking.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Although we can't totally rule out QM as having a meaningful effect on neural circuits (and thus "consciousness") Brownian noise is almost certainly a bigger player. The brain in humans sits at a cosy 37 C. Molecules are bouncing around in there like crazy. Interestingly, the basic currency of neural communication, the action potential, seems to be an attempt to achieve something like digital signaling on inherently noisy and probabilistic hardware.
One of the most interesting papers arguing that QM has an effect on living systems is here (behind a paywall, sorry):
Coherently wired light-harvesting in photosynthetic marine algae at ambient temperature
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That's why, if you're going to doctor financial reports, you get a professional to do it.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Just connect it with a gun trigger, point to your head and see what the world is made of!
Every Scientist knows that Einsteins Relativity is wrong and that the Standard model is wrong but they are the best we have right now.
FWIW, all models are wrong... always and necessarily. They are not reality, they are models. Observation may be correct, but any attempt to model what is observed will always remain what it actually is: only a model.
That's not quite right, a model may by definition be a simplified picture of reality, but it shouldn't actually disagree with that reality
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
However, as a programmer, this simulated reality is an big waste of computational power. It takes far more power to track down a probability waves position and interference in a probability wave as quantum physics outlines then it would have been to just implement a Newtonian version of reality.
That's only true under the assumption that they are not running the simulation on quantum computers!! Actually I wonder whether their computers have to be quantum or just analogue.
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If its being run under a quantum computer then it puts Uncertainty ahead of Determinism.
It's rather more likely he was joking.
Well, I was certainly attempting to do so. Thank you for responding as you did. In a less humorous vein, the entire time I was making my post I was cognizant of Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. I think it's in the third volume where he makes the claim that there exist no random sequences, provided you accept a number of seemingly reasonable requirements for random sequences to have. The conclusion he suggests is that we really don't know what random sequences are. Or, as aintnostranger has implied, the sequence 9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9 is exactly as likely to occur as any other "random" sequence of numbers.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Modern games do not call their random source often enough for its performance to be a big deal. That's why pretty much everybody moved to MT when it came out: it was less than an order of magnitude slower than LCG, and the quality of the random numbers was well established, and there was an acceptable commercial license on a very good implementation. You could trivially run tests against that library to verify you had it implemented correctly as well. It was a 'just-right' trade-off between performance and better quality random numbers.
For most multi-player games, the seeding of the players is irrelevant. The server decides all important outcomes, so only its seed matters. The players' clients are just informed of the outcomes. Whether or not the players see a randomly-shaped explosion exactly the same is usually too trivial to matter, but if you do care, then you actually want synchronized seeds, and those are used in some places.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
FWIW, all models are wrong... always and necessarily. They are not reality, they are models. Observation may be correct, but any attempt to model what is observed will always remain what it actually is: only a model.
That makes it sound a little bit more negative than it is. All models are approximations, which aren't wrong/right in a binary sense but instead sit on a continuum of progressively closer agreement with experiment.
...until a pixelated circle of ones in a field of zeroes shows up. In which case, you should not open snail mail letters -- they're likely to say your Dad is not your Dad.
So, it's random as far as Aspect can tell. [..] There is no random. There is only random enough.
I'd rephrase this as, "Truly random according to current theory."
You've managed to combine link-speak with xkcd-speak, both of which I hate. Now get off my lawn!
Ah, NeXT ... the machine that gave my my first access to a UNIX command-line.
Didn't get to play on the console much, but a friendly Jesuit in the physics department allowed me access to his research machine so I could see UNIX since the comp-sci department didn't have anything at all.
Fond memories of that machine ... by the time I had a Linux box I was pretty good to go with bash and a couple of other things.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If you knew the shape of the knowledge, you would already be on your way to obtaining the knowledge. The best science is done on the premise that nothing is impossible. I wouldn't be so quick to uphold the "laws of the universe" because they're historically very fragile.
Looks like you conflated randomness with probability (a tool humans use to predict randomness).
Fair enough - as long as you also admit at the same time that gravity might stop working. In any case, what we know now is what we know. We can't keep doubting it for no reason. When some reason comes long, then we'll see if it needs correcting. Till then, let's have faith in what we know so far.
Just because we can't know a position and vector of a particle now doesn't mean we won't ever be able to.
Yes it does. The Heisenburg uncertainty principle is not a limitation of technology. It's a law of the universe. It's like saying "just because gravity exists today doesn't mean it will exist sometime in the future."
It's a law of the universe as we know it.
I posit the following:
There is more to the universe than we currently see/know/understand.
Thus, there is the possibility of something existing that we do not know about and that can affect that which we do know and understand.
Unless you can prove that there is not more to the universe than we currently see/know/understand, then you must logically conclude that there is a possibility of Heisenburg being wrong, there is a possibility it really is turtles all the way down, etc. And it is logically impossible to prove that there is not more to the universe than we currently see/know/understand.
The only thing we can truly prove, the only thing we can truly know, is that we exist. Cogito ergo sum means something, you know.
No - it's the other way around. The burden of proof lies with the person claiming there's something out there we can't observer or record. This is why we say "Fairies don't exist." not "Fairies might exist."
So it's not for us to prove that "there's not more to the universe". It's for you to prove there is more. Till you prove there's more, there's nothing by default. Just like there are no fairies/leprechauns/unichorns/god/orbiting teacups by default until someone proves otherwise.
Fair enough - as long as you also admit at the same time that the Earth is not the centre of the universe. In any case, what we know now is what we know. We can't keep doubting it for no reason. When some reason comes long, then we'll see if it needs correcting. Till then, let's have faith in what we know so far.
There, fixed that for you.
Even today "a few thousand" for a computer is a hell of a lot of money for most people, as you're well into the secondhand car league there. Twenty years ago you must have been able to buy a new car for that.
A new car??? Not even close in Finland. At that time, cars had in excess of 100% taxes, leading people to keep them running a long time. So used cars were not much cheaper than new ones, and the price curve was very long and declined rather slowly. In the early 1990s, even a clunker which was already 20 years old would have cost rather more than a brand new T5200. Don't assume that car prices in all countries are similar to those in the US, especially used car prices.
FYI, my current car has more than 320000km on the clock, and is in very good condition; I hope to keep it well past 500000km. BTW, car taxes are slightly less than 100% now, part of it being a large "registration fee" component to avoid EU issues. There is, of course, an additional 23% VAT on the car and on the registration fee.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
You mean you have to keep believing the earth is the center of the universe. After all, who knows? One day we might find out that it's the center and our limited intelligence just can't see it right now.
You are the one who claimed
Yes it does. The Heisenburg uncertainty principle is not a limitation of technology. It's a law of the universe.
So the "burden of proof" is on you to prove it is a fundamental law of the universe, and not a phenomenal result in observation that arises due to the laws beneath it. Time and time again, throughout all of human history, we've gotten to the point where people think they've got it all figured out, and then bam, they're wrong.
Unless you have an explanation for everything, you haven't fully explained anything, let alone proven it. I don't see a unified field theory, do you?
Furthermore, the "You made a claim, you have to prove it!" line is tired (and the same goes for "Citation needed."). It's equivalent to a 4 year old saying "Nuh-uh, prove it!". It's a shining beacon of the utter lack of ability or willingness to consider anything but your own entrenched viewpoint.
Your claim is that Heisenberg will always hold. Tell me why, and why it is impossible for there to be a driving principle behind it that we are currently unaware of. If you cannot do that, you must logically conclude that the possibility exists that it may not be a fundamental physical principle.
That has already been proved. Why do I need to reproduce the proof on a slashdot post of all places? What you're talking about is the "deeper reality" theories which Einstein and a generation of physicists tried to figure out because quantum mechanics made them uncomfortable. We really shouldn't be having this discussion in the 21st century decades after the conclusive Bell experiments. Look up Wikipedia if you need to get more details.
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a law the same way that gravity is a law. Question it if you want. But then I also have the right to demand that you question gravity too.
The burden is on you to prove that it's not a law. Find a way to invalidate it and we'll go ahead and rewrite the textbooks. Spouting off about how "everything is possible" is rather disingenuous. Here, I'll rephrase:
To the best of our knowledge and ability, it is our considered understanding that the Heisenburg uncertainty principle is a fundamental law of the universe until and unless convincing proof to the contrary may be discovered, explained, and reproduced by peers in the scientific community.
We usually just leave out all of the qualifiers, but if you want to be a pedantic dick about it, there you go.
I always figured you could just take the Planck length and then determine the last meaningful digit of Pi for a given circle. The answer would vary depending on the size of the circle, but you would make an argument for it being the last meaningful digit of Pi as it relates to reality.
Heck, if you wanted to bound it by taking the size of the observable universe and dividing it by the Planck length you get ~5.34 E61 Planck lengths in diameter. So any value of Pi with at least about 63 significant figures should be enough to measure any object which can fit in the known universe so...
3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 59
The last digit of Pi is 9. There you go.
"and the current value cannot be the same or it rerolls"
Which makes it no longer random of course.
...I thought RNG quest spawns were bad enough as it is. I can hardly wait 'til Blizz adopts this for WoW.
Actually, radioactive decay is totally random (that's why Schrödinger used it in the famous cat-in-a-box gedankenexperiment. The half-life just tells you the overall rate, but that no more help than knowing how often you flip a coin -- no help with heads or tails.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Every Scientist knows that Einsteins Relativity is wrong and that the Standard model is wrong but they are the best we have right now.
FWIW, all models are wrong... always and necessarily. They are not reality, they are models. Observation may be correct, but any attempt to model what is observed will always remain what it actually is: only a model.
That's not quite right, a model may by definition be a simplified picture of reality, but it shouldn't actually disagree with that reality
...
That makes it sound a little bit more negative than it is. All models are approximations, which aren't wrong/right in a binary sense but instead sit on a continuum of progressively closer agreement with experiment.
Perhaps I am being too binary with the meaning of 'wrong,' nevertheless, a model is fundamentally metaphor and can be anything at all as long as it somehow successfully describes some aspect of reality. Some models will be perfect for what they accomplish... dead on accuracy concerning their little window describing reality... but to ask if they of themselves are reality, the true thing in-itself, is always abruptly apologized for with a "no... its only a model, but it works very well for what we need it to do" A model is often more than simple metaphor, though if it is, usually (can't think of when its not) its a closed system. I don't know of any models that are concious of themselves, like, technically, the real universe is; no models account for anthropomorphic principles and all glaze over the shocking idea that an individual's life could be (if not already able to be, using drugs and audio/video + dedicated tactile inputs, then soon will be able to be) completely emulated in a hollodeck-like experience (going back to first philosophy, I do wonder if Descartes could possibly have fathomed his fantasies would truly be real someday).
If a only single instance of a model not describing reality is necessary to show that it is wrong, consider the instance where it describes itself.
The Admin and the Engineer
Well ... no, it doesn't. I'm not a physicist, but I assume they've got a bit more backing up the uncertainty principle than, "We can't seem to get these two measurements at the same time, therefore no one ever will." (Note that I think you're less wrong than the post to which you replied, but more worth correcting on this somewhat philosophical point.)
The "therefore" part as you mentioned isn't the same that I was talking about. Yes - scientists certainly have a lot more going than that. I don't think I implied that was all they had to go on... :)
Someone wrote a short story about this, in which an infinite quantum computer is created that can simulate the entire universe perfectly, and it begins simulating itself and the researchers working on the simulation. Of course, that means that there are infinitely nested universes being simulated, because there will be a simulated simulation, and then a simulation inside of the simulated simulation, and so on.
That said, there is something sort of unsatisfying and perhaps unmanly about demanding no amount of reality from our models. This is what Einstein hated about quantum mechanics. He felt that the role of the physicist should always be to discover what is *actually* going on, and learn some kind of truth about the universe. Bohr and the Copenhagen crowd thought it was misguided to try to attribute macroscopic-style meaning to these models that operate on a level that we can never directly interact with. I appreciate the pragmatism of the Copenhagen interpretation, but I have to side with Einstein in the sense that a physicist should be interested in what the structure of reality *is*, not just what we perceive it to be.