Randomness

[Alectric]

i saw a documentary on human psychology:
they can prove, that the human brain is not as random as you think, and cannot properly predict chance.
they got like 20 people to do a test, and write down all the times they think heads and tails would come in 100 flips, in order. Then they showed a one with actual flips of heads and tails.
they showed that the people never did combinations (or combos) of more that 4 heads or tails at once, while it was different in the real flips, being like even 8 heads in a row.

but yeah, agreed with ramonds point, just randomness is something people dont see coming and cant predict.

[Azriel]

random number generators are not random, but just algorithms that take some X numbers and spit out other numbers that probably get fed back into the algorithm again when the user asks for the next random number.

..

random doesn't exist, (short version's what ramond said)

if someone asks you "say something random", you cannot possibly say something that you have no prior knowledge of, you'd say:

i) a fact that is true, but has no relevance to the topic of the conversation
ii) something that is false, which also has no relevance to the context of your discussion, or
iii) something that makes no sense at all, which would be a combination of nouns, actions, and/or adjectives that you think of at the top of your mind.

thing is, the human mind always makes up a statement, not a question, when asked to say sth random. there's of course the phrase:
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

which is random, but not actually. it's a cleverly thought out phrase that is meant to confuse ur mind.



Azriel~

[Alectric]

ow, thats like the whole travelling in time paradoxes...they confuse me.

[blow_fly98]

Randomness results from a chain of thoughts that's so long that the final thought is not really in anyway related to the initial thought. I guess that is thus deemed "random".

I think for most people, random = totally unrelated.

[8obis]

Randomness

P.S ^ Clicky.
Please, do not say that didn't help at all this was one of the 1st things i found on google..Plus i didn't even read the article :P

~RtXaS~

[Silverthorn]

Randomness in computers etc.:
You take a seed-value (which can be literally any integer) and from there build via algorithms seemingly random numbers. If you evaluate many of those random numbers, you'll notice that there is a pattern in them. Computers cannot produce random numbers, they can just do awkward calculations to create pseudo-random values.


Biological randomness:
The behavior that you wouldn't expect from somebody. If you ask somebody "What is 2+2?" and he answers with "It's raining outside", it is defined as a "random answer". Often, you associate events with something.

Spoons make you buy new carpets.
This seems to be random, right? Now, let's say we have this trail of events:
You sit at a table --> You want to investigate how a spoon behaves when you hit one end --> the spoon flies through the air --> the spoon hits a glass filled with red wine --> the glass falls --> red wine is spilled on the new carpet --> there is a giant red spot on the carpet --> you try to exterminate the spot with some chemicals --> you destroy the carpet --> the carpet has to be thrown away.
Suddenly, it's fully logical. You wouldn't have guessed this without the background information. There is no randomness when you know how it happened.

[Trickityhouses]

Electrons can be in 2 places at once. If our brain works on electric impulses and a single electron is the difference between picking 5 or 6 eggs then the outcome cannot be predicted, making it random. That or both outcomes MUST occur creating a parallel universe.

I saw it on tv somewhere...

[Silverthorn]

Electrons can be in 2 places at once. If our brain works on electric impulses and a single electron is the difference between picking 5 or 6 eggs then the outcome cannot be predicted, making it random. That or both outcomes MUST occur creating a parallel universe.

I saw it on tv somewhere...

Technically, the exact position of an electron cannot be described at all if you know its impulse (Heisenberg uncertainty principle). Means, the more exact you know an electron's speed, the less exact you'll know the position and vice versa. However, this effect plays a minor role in relation to biological organisms, as those effects play on a sub-atomic scale. The thesis that it is at two places at once is thus kind of wrong, it just seems to be that way because of probabilities (Schroedinger equations). What I want to say: although there is something undeterminable in those electrons, their fluctuations can unlikely produce such results, therefore our cells are simply way too large. All a matter of scale. I'd like to see that TV show, tho.

[Trickityhouses]

I think it was called the universe i forget the channel, discovery? or History? dunno