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> Sender: news@linus.UUCP Reply-To: bwk@mbunix (Kort) Distribution: comp Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, Mass. Lines: 21 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