Is it possible for an electronic device to produce truly random numbers? No, it isn't.
Why? Because random does not exist. Everything is deterministic. Random is just a name we give to things that seem to happen arbitrarily, but that really isn't the case.
Unfortunately, We just don't have a good enough understanding of the universe to prove this. Something like that might be quite far off. Though, I believe in less than 500 years Homo sapiens will have been long obsolete.
>>12
Only if you think that there is absolutely no difference between something that it empirically unknown and something that is ontologically unknowable.
>>23
Yes, gravity was just made up. It was made up like everything was made up. We are but small insignificant life forms. No one would care if I did jump out the window.
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Anonymous2008-02-18 18:16
>>25
and to add to that, no would care if probably anyone on 4 chan jumped out a window.
No one on this board can disprove determinism. It's a sort of faith to be strongly in favour of one view on the subject.
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Anonymous2008-02-19 1:14
>>29
Depends on the variety of determinism. If you mean nomological determinism -- every event in time unfolds according to the circumstance at that time and the laws of nature -- then you're right. Short of positing divine intervention, you can't disprove it. If you mean strongly predictive determinism -- as in we could in principle predict all future states of the universe from the perfect current knowledge of the current state -- then you're wrong, period. The premise is invalid. Perfect knowledge doesn't exist: see Heisenberg. Some prediction problems require calculations as complex as the entire physical universe. Fuck it, even given axioms, there are statements completely consistent with those axioms that nevertheless cannot be proved or predicted to exist from those axioms. See Goedel.
There are properties of the universe that directly affect the future states of it that are not just unknown, but absolutely unknowable. Absolute prediction is impossible. Probability distributions on future states are the only 'true' description, regardless of the fact that only one will be realized.
Bayes is vindicated by physics.
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Anonymous2008-02-19 1:59
God exists PROVE ME WRONG
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Anonymous2008-02-19 2:54
>>30
I still believe nothing is truly "random". We're just too simple to see this. A few steps ahead of chimps. At the bottom of a ladder that leads to a place we could not hope to dream of.
Everything has to unfold a certain way. There is nothing random about it.
I agree with OP, although the last sentence is just faggotry (obsolete to what dickhead?)
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Anonymous2008-02-20 12:04
>>38
A genetically re engineered version of us. There are several ways that I personally can think of that we could be surpassed by superior forms of life that we've created ourselves. I really don't believe Homo sapiens will last that long once we break into relatively hardcore exploration of genetic manipulation.
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Anonymous2008-02-20 18:37
>>39
Do you really need another Holocaust to tell you why quests for Ubermenschen are a bad idea?
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Anonymous2008-02-20 18:46
Hitler was thwarted by the Jews. If he had succeeded we would be a lot cooler now.
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Anonymous2008-02-20 18:52
>>41
My Jewish girlfriend is hotter than your Aryan whore.
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Anonymous2008-02-20 20:52
>>40
It's not really that simple, Anon. I don't have the patience to go into detail. Or time, at current.
>>45
Liquid Snake is a pretty stupid name. What the hell would you do with a liquid snake? Put it in a bottle?
It wouldn't be much of a snake without it's long, serpentine body, now would it? Maybe it could be kind of half-liquid, in a gel sort of way. But that's not a snake. That's a slug. "Ooh, look at me, I'm an Ubermensch." but you're not, you're a fucking slugman, and you suck.
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Anonymous2008-02-21 18:42
>>45
Liquid Snake is a pretty stupid name. What the hell would you do with a liquid snake? Put it in a bottle?
It wouldn't be much of a snake without it's long, serpentine body, now would it? Maybe it could be kind of half-liquid, in a gel sort of way. But that's not a snake. That's a slug. "Ooh, look at me, I'm an Ubermensch." but you're not, you're a fucking slugman, and you suck.
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Anonymous2008-02-21 18:46
>>46,47
I felt this was a very important message. That's why I posted it twice, so you'd have double the opportunity to read it. Or maybe you'll read it two times. It's your choice, really. I can lead the horse to the water, but I can't make it read, and all that.
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Anonymous2008-02-21 19:25
>>48
I think horses could read better if they weren't letter blind
>>51
Well, there's a lot of similarities. For example, horses can't read, and determinism can't exist with locality, so there's things that both can't do.
And you could easily get a child to believe in a talking, reading, horse, and a lot of children believe that the world operates by deterministic rules.
Similarily, the Bell test experiments and Muybridge's photos have a lot in common, in that both prove something, one about determinism and locality, the other about horses.
Isn't the radioactive decay of the atomic nucleus random? And this is not so because of our limitations in measuring, but rather it is random by physical law?
Also, Heisenberg.
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Anonymous2008-02-24 21:10
>>59
No, you don't get it, man. When physicists say "it's physical law" what they really mean is "We blew all the grant money that was supposed to go to figuring that out on shemale Thai hookers, so we'll just tell everyone it's random".