Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!oddjob!uwvax!husc6!linus!mbunix!bwk
From: bwk@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Barry W. Kort)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Free Will & Self Awareness
Message-ID: <31337@linus.UUCP>
Date: 9 May 88 10:52:56 GMT
References: <770@onion.cs.reading.ac.uk> <1177@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <10942@sunybcs.UUCP> <4543@super.upenn.edu> <1179@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
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Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, Mass.
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Keywords: randomness responsibility

I was doing fine reading Cliff's rejoinder to Lloyd's comments until
I came to this part:

>>We can't demonstrate true randomness in present day computers; 
>>the closest we can come (to my knowledge) is to generate a string
>>of numbers which does not repeat itself. [Lloyd]

>This is not possible in a von Neumann machine. [Cliff]

I was under the impression that a simple recursion (or not-so-simple
if one is a fan of Ramanujan) can emit the digits of pi (or e or
SQRT(2)) and that such a string does not repeat itself.

I think what Cliff meant is that a von Neumann machine cannot emit
a string whose structure cannot be divined.

If I wanted to give my von Neumann machine a *true* random number
generator, I would connect it to an A/D converter driven by thermal
noise (i.e. a toasty resister).

--Barry Kort