Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!ncar!gatech!linus!mbunix!bwk From: bwk@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Barry W. Kort) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Playing dice with the universe. Summary: Please distinguish "Unpredictable", "Random", and "Independent" Message-ID: <40207@linus> Date: 22 Sep 88 11:32:58 GMT References: <1369@garth.UUCP> <2346@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <1383@garth.UUCP> <372@quintus.UUCP> <1390@garth.UUCP> <388@quintus.UUCP> <7059@aw.sei.cmu.edu> <40141@linus.UUCP> <453@quintus.UUCP> Sender: news@linus Reply-To: bwk@mbunix (Barry Kort) Organization: Moribund Corporation, Seventh Chapter, DE Lines: 14 In article <453@quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: >Yes, we humans play dice. But that doesn't prove they deliver _RANDOM_ >results. "Unpredictable", "random", and "independent" are distinguishable >properties. Dice could be as determined as the digits of pi and still be >as humanly unpredictable. Richard, since we have departed from the original question to a technical dialogue on the meaning of "random", could you supply us with your definitions of "random", "unpredictable", and "independent"? Are there other related terms in the lexicon that we can further explore and distinguish? (After that, we can see if any of them capture the the metaphor of "God playing dice with the universe".) --Barry Kort