LOL What kinda moron voted this down? Random is fascinating and I have to assume the unhappy voter simply has no idea how fascinating random really is! It's a fucking awesome topic, weirdos!
Because we don't actually know, with absolute confidence, that it is true random.
The number is based on atmospheric noise - which may not be random at all.
Many people confuse random. There's the random that you probably are thinking about and then there's true random. The latter is very, very rare and exceedingly difficult to generate. The former is quite handy and we have randomness that is random enough to be fit for purpose, such as cryptography or games of chance.
True random is very difficult and we aren't even completely confident that it exists. Throughout the history of humankind, we've thought many things were random. We've later learned that they're not random and stopped blaming them on gods, fate, kismet, or many of the other terms we've used to ascribe things to a cause when we didn't understand the subject.
(This is a very, very near and dear subject to me. I fucking love random!)
I edited my submission to offer to give some instruction about randomness. It can be a very, very complex subject.
Well, it could be real vs. imaginary. It may be a real random number - or we may just be imagining it is.
It will seem random, simply because we don't know the initial starting point of the universe and, of course, our little star system. That doens't make it random - but it does make it unpredictable. The two really aren't synonyms.
Like infinity, some random is more random than others.
Are you familiar with Bell's Theorem?
Another way to look at it is to examine chaos theory and then to see how that applies to weather systems. Because we don't know the initial starting point, and can't calculate it well enough, we can't make very long-term weather forecasts with any significant confidence. 'Snot random, we just don't know enough information. It's a "chaotic system." That's a system that appears to be random, or have elements of randomness in it, but isn't really random once you have enough data.
It's a fascinating subject and one that an inebriated person can ponder for hours and hours. I've spent a remarkable amount of my life pondering randomness. I don't consider it wasted time.
Which is why I'd love to smash that whole tower down. Right now, I'm not significant enough to warrant a Wikipedia article. That'd get me in the history books. Bell's Theorem is, to many physicists, considered the most profound in all of physics. I'm in the "meh" camp. Unfortunately, I'm currently on the wrong side of the debate and ALL evidence suggests that the theorem is correct.
When the polarization of both photons is measured in the same direction, both give the same outcome: perfect correlation. When measured at directions making an angle 45° with one another, the outcomes are completely random (uncorrelated).
Which is supported by observation and so we currently have fairly high confidence in there existing true-random. It's one of the very, very few things that we can be confident is random.
What that basically means is that the quantum state, the spin, of two entangled photons (and probably electrons) is random and impossible to know without observation. Most observations have been done on photons but, to date, Bell's Theorem has stood up to scrutiny and has, in fact, been confirmed many times by way of observation.
So, currently, we do believe (have some confidence in, as science doesn't really deal with 'certainty'), that true random does exist in the universe.
There are those, like myself, who suggest that this theorem may fall and that it may turn out to be false - but only if we could observe from outside the universe. So, we can't do that and Bell's Theorem is considered a theory that we have very high confidence in. It's one of the only areas where we're pretty confident it's true random - with current understanding.
But, our understanding has changed many times.
Every year, I usually devote a chunk of hours to re-examining the theorem to see if I can find a flaw in the mathematics. I simply have a hard time believing that true random exists, given the overwhelming evidence that we call history. Every time we've thought things were random, we were pretty much wrong. Bell's Theorem not withstanding, of course.
As for weather, I had the great privilege of of working with the late Dr. Lorenz. He was the person who got me interested in chaos theory and looking for things to apply it to. The data for Massachusetts traffic was free and I was poor. That's actually how I got started with traffic modeling. Lorenz was one of the folks who wrote a letter of recommendation for me to be accepted to the graduate program and was the one that pushed me from pure math to applied math.
Weather is extremely complex. It's very difficult to know (impossible, currently) the initial starting state. It was that same Lorenz that coined the phrase, "Butterfly Effect." That's poorly understood, but it means that even a trivial change in the starting point, or even along the path, can make the results wildly different. This was fully appreciated when it examined the three body problem.
It has great influence on our understanding of everything from weather to cosmology. Getting to study under Lorenz was a great honor and something I consider more valuable than I consider my degree. It was probably one of the most influential periods of my life and that work changed my life forever. (See, an example of a small change having a large impact on the results!)
It makes sense that if something seems random, it's probably just not enough understanding. I know the more you learn about something, the more things that seemed hidden become totally obvious. So you'd think if we can't predict the weather, maybe we're just not taking everything into account.
It's pretty much a closed system - it's just that it's the size of a planet.
Lorenz is pretty famous in academic circles. Many people mistakenly attribute the 'chaotic system theory' to him, but that's inaccurate. He just furthered it along.
And, I'm of the opinion that we've historically been really bad at believing things are random when they really aren't. As such, I have my doubts about true random existing at all. Of course, we have ample randomness that does enough of what we want, and this will still be true after quantum computing goes mainstream.
And yes, our inability to predict the weather is because we simply don't know enough. Predicting weather is computationally expensive and there's a limit to how far we can push it out. When I was a wee lad, a forecast might only have been good for one or two days. Today, we make fairly accurate predictions out to ten days. Consider how much compute power has been added, and you'll start to understand the complexity. A simple push-button calculator has more compute power than the computers we had back when I was young. That's a good indicator of how hard it is. As you said, we use massive supercomputers. Some of the highest ranking supercomputers are used to make weather predictions, it's that difficult.
And weather is (more or less) a closed system - but there is atmospheric influence from our own star. Not too many other stars are close enough to impact us in any significant fashion, but even those could be the wind from the wings of a butterfly.
Like many good bits of science, the butterfly effect was observed quite by accident. The computer he was using was able to do digits to the 9th significant decimal position but the printer only printed out digits to the third significant digit. It's so named because of the shape it made when plotted to a monitor or to a plotter - it looks like a butterfly.
And, if I could bring down Bell's Theorem (I'm really in the skeptic camp) then I'd not only get a parade and a statue, I'd probably get a Nobel. I'd finally get the acclaim a goddamned national treasure deserves.
Trivially related: Two things... If you want to know if you understand a subject well, try teaching it to a layperson. And, I enjoy these types of threads, 'cause I use them to find ways to make things more understandable. Yes, I'm retired - but I'm still a mathematician at heart. I love math and think numeracy should be as concentrated on as literacy, if not more. I'm also not fond of the way math instruction is given, so I like finding new ways to make these things understandable for just regular people. Randomness is EXCEEDINGLY difficult to truly comprehend. It's nearly as difficult to wrap your brain around it as infinity is. They're two of the most misunderstood, and difficult to understand, topics in mathematics.
We humans absolutely suck at randomness. Your brain won't even let you pick a random number - even if you think you are. It's a number generated by way of electro-chemical mechanism and is not random.
In all the universe, as near as we can tell, very few things are true random. Even the conclusions of randomness associated with Bell's Theorem are still subject to dispute. It currently suggests that true random exists. I'm of the mind that Bell's Theorem may well fall and that we simply need to know more of the initial starting state.
The other sad reality is that very, very few people actually understand random. Numeracy is just not that high and, to be honest, I don't suppose people need to know. It gets rather confusing and, at some point becomes a philosophical matter and is inherently not falsifiable. You end up with questions such as, "If we could observe the universe from outside the universe, would it be true random or just chaotic?" And, that's not actually something that can be given a definitive answer at this time.
Randomness and infinity are two of my favorite subjects.
No. Infinity doesn't loop on itself. And, if it hits every type of number, it is no longer random.
It's also important to remember that infinity is just a concept. No infinities exist in nature. There is not infinite matter. There is not infinite energy. The universe is not infinitely large. Those are just REALLY fucking huge numbers - but not infinite. Infinite doesn't exist in reality. It's a construct of the human mind.
Frankly, it's not even a useful construct (usually). However, because it is a construct, we must answer it with mathematics. Mathematics is just a language we humans use to evaluate logic and to describe things. It's a philosophy known as logicism.
That question came to my mind, when I was picturing an "infinitely" small object traveling in an "infinitely" large circle, where the initial point is 0 and one direction is consider more negative than the other. To this object's point of view, there is a negative and a positive infinity. If there were an outsider object that is relatively larger than this "infinite" path belonging to a much smaller object, perhaps another level of abstraction of "infinity", and if this outsider object happened to travel along the path of that "infinitely" large circle, wouldn't it be possible for the much larger object to "pick up" that smaller object, which might lead to the initial point on this "infinitely" large circle?
:-) You are obsessed with the absolute state of randomness. Every source we use to generate a random number comes from some non-random mechanism. So this absolute state of randomness can never be achieved. Even if we do consider one random generator to be absolute, at this moment in time, I think it will eventually become non-random, when the mechanics of such process is understood. So I don't think we will ever be able to find true randomness. :-) For hardcore mathematicians, it may be excessively fascinating and mind-boggling. But, for practicality, the degree of randomness would depend on the application.
TheBuddha ago
LOL What kinda moron voted this down? Random is fascinating and I have to assume the unhappy voter simply has no idea how fascinating random really is! It's a fucking awesome topic, weirdos!
clamhurt_legbeard ago
why is it real ish instead of real
TheBuddha ago
Because we don't actually know, with absolute confidence, that it is true random.
The number is based on atmospheric noise - which may not be random at all.
Many people confuse random. There's the random that you probably are thinking about and then there's true random. The latter is very, very rare and exceedingly difficult to generate. The former is quite handy and we have randomness that is random enough to be fit for purpose, such as cryptography or games of chance.
True random is very difficult and we aren't even completely confident that it exists. Throughout the history of humankind, we've thought many things were random. We've later learned that they're not random and stopped blaming them on gods, fate, kismet, or many of the other terms we've used to ascribe things to a cause when we didn't understand the subject.
(This is a very, very near and dear subject to me. I fucking love random!)
I edited my submission to offer to give some instruction about randomness. It can be a very, very complex subject.
clamhurt_legbeard ago
sweet
i first interpreted it as real vs imaginary
then i read some of your other comments and thought you might mean randomish
thx
TheBuddha ago
Well, it could be real vs. imaginary. It may be a real random number - or we may just be imagining it is.
It will seem random, simply because we don't know the initial starting point of the universe and, of course, our little star system. That doens't make it random - but it does make it unpredictable. The two really aren't synonyms.
Like infinity, some random is more random than others.
Are you familiar with Bell's Theorem?
Another way to look at it is to examine chaos theory and then to see how that applies to weather systems. Because we don't know the initial starting point, and can't calculate it well enough, we can't make very long-term weather forecasts with any significant confidence. 'Snot random, we just don't know enough information. It's a "chaotic system." That's a system that appears to be random, or have elements of randomness in it, but isn't really random once you have enough data.
It's a fascinating subject and one that an inebriated person can ponder for hours and hours. I've spent a remarkable amount of my life pondering randomness. I don't consider it wasted time.
clamhurt_legbeard ago
i dont know of bells theorem but i saw you mention it
whats it all about
i do know a lot about weather
and i know it chokes supercomputers almost as bad as aerodynamics calculations
TheBuddha ago
Also, if you're curious about our confidence in Bell's Theorem, hit up this page:
https://physics.aps.org/articles/v8/123
Press CTRL + F and type in "confidence."
Which is why I'd love to smash that whole tower down. Right now, I'm not significant enough to warrant a Wikipedia article. That'd get me in the history books. Bell's Theorem is, to many physicists, considered the most profound in all of physics. I'm in the "meh" camp. Unfortunately, I'm currently on the wrong side of the debate and ALL evidence suggests that the theorem is correct.
clamhurt_legbeard ago
upgrade from parade to statue
nice
TheBuddha ago
The theorem states, in a simple form, this:
If you hit up Wikipedia, it gets into the implications for randomness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem
One significant quote from there would be:
Which is supported by observation and so we currently have fairly high confidence in there existing true-random. It's one of the very, very few things that we can be confident is random.
What that basically means is that the quantum state, the spin, of two entangled photons (and probably electrons) is random and impossible to know without observation. Most observations have been done on photons but, to date, Bell's Theorem has stood up to scrutiny and has, in fact, been confirmed many times by way of observation.
So, currently, we do believe (have some confidence in, as science doesn't really deal with 'certainty'), that true random does exist in the universe.
There are those, like myself, who suggest that this theorem may fall and that it may turn out to be false - but only if we could observe from outside the universe. So, we can't do that and Bell's Theorem is considered a theory that we have very high confidence in. It's one of the only areas where we're pretty confident it's true random - with current understanding.
But, our understanding has changed many times.
Every year, I usually devote a chunk of hours to re-examining the theorem to see if I can find a flaw in the mathematics. I simply have a hard time believing that true random exists, given the overwhelming evidence that we call history. Every time we've thought things were random, we were pretty much wrong. Bell's Theorem not withstanding, of course.
As for weather, I had the great privilege of of working with the late Dr. Lorenz. He was the person who got me interested in chaos theory and looking for things to apply it to. The data for Massachusetts traffic was free and I was poor. That's actually how I got started with traffic modeling. Lorenz was one of the folks who wrote a letter of recommendation for me to be accepted to the graduate program and was the one that pushed me from pure math to applied math.
Weather is extremely complex. It's very difficult to know (impossible, currently) the initial starting state. It was that same Lorenz that coined the phrase, "Butterfly Effect." That's poorly understood, but it means that even a trivial change in the starting point, or even along the path, can make the results wildly different. This was fully appreciated when it examined the three body problem.
It has great influence on our understanding of everything from weather to cosmology. Getting to study under Lorenz was a great honor and something I consider more valuable than I consider my degree. It was probably one of the most influential periods of my life and that work changed my life forever. (See, an example of a small change having a large impact on the results!)
clamhurt_legbeard ago
That's really cool. I've heard of him, haha.
It makes sense that if something seems random, it's probably just not enough understanding. I know the more you learn about something, the more things that seemed hidden become totally obvious. So you'd think if we can't predict the weather, maybe we're just not taking everything into account.
It's pretty much a closed system - it's just that it's the size of a planet.
TheBuddha ago
Lorenz is pretty famous in academic circles. Many people mistakenly attribute the 'chaotic system theory' to him, but that's inaccurate. He just furthered it along.
And, I'm of the opinion that we've historically been really bad at believing things are random when they really aren't. As such, I have my doubts about true random existing at all. Of course, we have ample randomness that does enough of what we want, and this will still be true after quantum computing goes mainstream.
And yes, our inability to predict the weather is because we simply don't know enough. Predicting weather is computationally expensive and there's a limit to how far we can push it out. When I was a wee lad, a forecast might only have been good for one or two days. Today, we make fairly accurate predictions out to ten days. Consider how much compute power has been added, and you'll start to understand the complexity. A simple push-button calculator has more compute power than the computers we had back when I was young. That's a good indicator of how hard it is. As you said, we use massive supercomputers. Some of the highest ranking supercomputers are used to make weather predictions, it's that difficult.
And weather is (more or less) a closed system - but there is atmospheric influence from our own star. Not too many other stars are close enough to impact us in any significant fashion, but even those could be the wind from the wings of a butterfly.
Like many good bits of science, the butterfly effect was observed quite by accident. The computer he was using was able to do digits to the 9th significant decimal position but the printer only printed out digits to the third significant digit. It's so named because of the shape it made when plotted to a monitor or to a plotter - it looks like a butterfly.
And, if I could bring down Bell's Theorem (I'm really in the skeptic camp) then I'd not only get a parade and a statue, I'd probably get a Nobel. I'd finally get the acclaim a goddamned national treasure deserves.
Trivially related: Two things... If you want to know if you understand a subject well, try teaching it to a layperson. And, I enjoy these types of threads, 'cause I use them to find ways to make things more understandable. Yes, I'm retired - but I'm still a mathematician at heart. I love math and think numeracy should be as concentrated on as literacy, if not more. I'm also not fond of the way math instruction is given, so I like finding new ways to make these things understandable for just regular people. Randomness is EXCEEDINGLY difficult to truly comprehend. It's nearly as difficult to wrap your brain around it as infinity is. They're two of the most misunderstood, and difficult to understand, topics in mathematics.
clamhurt_legbeard ago
true stuff
i was a tutor for a while
i enjoy teaching
thats probably why i sometimes make long shitposts about some interesting topic
TheBuddha ago
It's good for you.
SyriansAreTerrorists ago
I know alot about weather. The jews spread silver nitrate in the air to fuck us all up
clamhurt_legbeard ago
What else do you know?
SyriansAreTerrorists ago
The j00s sunk the titanic
clamhurt_legbeard ago
With the weather?
SyriansAreTerrorists ago
Nah, they paid the captain to sink it and promised him a bag of cash and a lifeboat. Of course they never intended to pay up. Never trust a j00
clamhurt_legbeard ago
Ok, but, I was asking about weather.
SyriansAreTerrorists ago
The jews don't care weather the white race survives.
clamhurt_legbeard ago
lol bullshit
whites are the only ones who pay bills lol
SyriansAreTerrorists ago
I still think it's cool that generating random numbers is so hard for computers.
They're built to follow strict rules so generating randomness makes them put up a fight.
TheBuddha ago
We humans absolutely suck at randomness. Your brain won't even let you pick a random number - even if you think you are. It's a number generated by way of electro-chemical mechanism and is not random.
In all the universe, as near as we can tell, very few things are true random. Even the conclusions of randomness associated with Bell's Theorem are still subject to dispute. It currently suggests that true random exists. I'm of the mind that Bell's Theorem may well fall and that we simply need to know more of the initial starting state.
The other sad reality is that very, very few people actually understand random. Numeracy is just not that high and, to be honest, I don't suppose people need to know. It gets rather confusing and, at some point becomes a philosophical matter and is inherently not falsifiable. You end up with questions such as, "If we could observe the universe from outside the universe, would it be true random or just chaotic?" And, that's not actually something that can be given a definitive answer at this time.
Randomness and infinity are two of my favorite subjects.
MadWorld ago
If an object perpetually travels across every random number from 0 to +infinity, will this object eventually come out from -infinity and back to 0?
TheBuddha ago
No. Infinity doesn't loop on itself. And, if it hits every type of number, it is no longer random.
It's also important to remember that infinity is just a concept. No infinities exist in nature. There is not infinite matter. There is not infinite energy. The universe is not infinitely large. Those are just REALLY fucking huge numbers - but not infinite. Infinite doesn't exist in reality. It's a construct of the human mind.
Frankly, it's not even a useful construct (usually). However, because it is a construct, we must answer it with mathematics. Mathematics is just a language we humans use to evaluate logic and to describe things. It's a philosophy known as logicism.
Does that answer your question?
MadWorld ago
That question came to my mind, when I was picturing an "infinitely" small object traveling in an "infinitely" large circle, where the initial point is 0 and one direction is consider more negative than the other. To this object's point of view, there is a negative and a positive infinity. If there were an outsider object that is relatively larger than this "infinite" path belonging to a much smaller object, perhaps another level of abstraction of "infinity", and if this outsider object happened to travel along the path of that "infinitely" large circle, wouldn't it be possible for the much larger object to "pick up" that smaller object, which might lead to the initial point on this "infinitely" large circle?
:-) You are obsessed with the absolute state of randomness. Every source we use to generate a random number comes from some non-random mechanism. So this absolute state of randomness can never be achieved. Even if we do consider one random generator to be absolute, at this moment in time, I think it will eventually become non-random, when the mechanics of such process is understood. So I don't think we will ever be able to find true randomness. :-) For hardcore mathematicians, it may be excessively fascinating and mind-boggling. But, for practicality, the degree of randomness would depend on the application.
MadWorld ago
Test comment1: 4983
MadWorld ago
Test comment2
MadWorld ago
Test comment3
MadWorld ago
Test comment4
heygeorge ago
Pseudo-random! And probably generated by jooooooooo
TheBuddha ago
Unknown, really. We don't have enough information to know if they're true random or pseudo random. What they are is random enough to suit the purpose.
Randomness is a very near and dear topic to me.
heygeorge ago
3
TheBuddha ago
LOL If you did that all by your lonesome, it's not a random number. ;-)
heygeorge ago
I used a sophisticated algorithm to ensure the number’s validity.
TheBuddha ago
:-/ <--- my skeptical face