Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uwmcsd1!uxc!ksuvax1!cseg!lag From: lag@cseg.uucp (L. Adrian Griffis) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Objective Uncertainty (was Re: The Ignorant assumption) Summary: Objective Uncertainty seems to look pretty good. Message-ID: <723@cseg.uucp> Date: 21 Sep 88 20:01:35 GMT References: <1369@garth.UUCP> <2346@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <1383@garth.UUCP> <443@quintus.UUCP> Organization: College of Engineering, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Lines: 17 In article <443@quintus.UUCP>, ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: > >None whatever. The conjecture is almost instantly disprovable: no Turing > >machine can output a true random number, but a physical system can. > Reference please! This is a _staggering_ result! I can believe that it > is true, but it is astonishing to learn that it has been _shown_. (I > strongly suspect that Robert Firth has assumed here what he set out to > prove.) How do you tell when "a true random number" has been output, anyway? I think there was an article on the notition of Objective Uncertainty in Scientific American in the April or May issue (I know there was such an article, but I'm not sure about the date). It looked to me like physics was close to driving the last nail into the coffin of the Hidden Variable theory. Does anyone else out there remember it?? -- UseNet: lag@cseg L. Adrian Griffis BITNET: AG27107@UAFSYSB