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From: pepke@loligo.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence
Keywords: random? oh no!
Message-ID: <180@loligo.fsu.edu>
Date: 6 Dec 88 05:14:49 GMT
References: <484@soleil.UUCP> <0XTukNy00Xol41W1Ui@andrew.cmu.edu> <42328@linus.UUCP> <1069@microsoft.UUCP>
Reply-To: pepke@loligo.UUCP (Eric Pepke)
Lines: 8

A Turing machine cannot just consult a truly random coin flipper.  If it
could, it wouldn't be a Turing machine.  However, there is a much simpler
objection to the argument.  A random number generator can only be consulted
a finite number of times in a lifetime.  For every finite sequence of
such random numbers, you can produce a partial Turing machine specification
which produces that sequence.  So, there's no problem.

-EMP