Xref: utzoo comp.ai:2796 talk.philosophy.misc:1678 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!gatech!gitpyr!loligo!pepke 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