Topic: Can you prove Randomness? - page 2. (Read 1248 times)

It's not really a question of resources; it's a physical law that there's a limit to precision in this sort of two-variable system.

The more precisely position is known, the less precisely we can measure the momentum. This is because, in a wave function, position and momentum are conjugate variables. A simplistic classical analogy that is often used is frequency and time - if we play a musical note, then the longer we play it for the more accurately we can determine its frequency, but the time at which the note occurs becomes longer, i.e. smeared out and impossible to identify as a point. If instead we play the note extremely briefly, then it has a much more definite time, but we can't pin down its frequency with much precision.

As for provably random - what do you think about my point above? (and diagram below)

Arguably true randomness can never be obtained in a classical system, but an entirely quantum system is a different matter. Quantum entanglement is a fascinating subject; in addition to being a source of true random numbers, it is the basic principle that allows the processing power of quantum computers to scale up exponentially (2ⁿ) as new qubits are added.


_{https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0019-0}

The statement is contradictory...




Even if we will never have enough resources to calculate this, it still doesn't actually prove Randomness exists.

P.S gonna read more about cosmic microwave background random bit generator

I'll only respond to this part with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle:
If you can't know speed and velocity of a particle exactly, you can't predict an impact, which means you can never have enough resources to identify this random event.

I like the use of cosmic microwave background radiation power spectrum as a random bit generator: there's no way you can ever predict the radiation, and if you would try to measure it outside the random generator, all you accomplish is changing the random output.

Infinity is infinitely random and infinitely ordered.

True for a coin toss, but not for all physics - certainly not for quantum mechanics. Have a look at the article I linked to above if you're interested. It's not just 100% random, it's provably so using the speed of light as a limiter. Fascinating stuff.

Ignorance != Randomness...

P.S this thread has nothing to do with gambling...

A coin toss is physics. If all the variables are known you could predict it. But prior to the toss (if conducted without deliberate bias) all the variables are not known so for the purpose of gambling or predicting the outcome it will be random with even odds.

What my premise is that our lack of ability to account for "every" "variable" makes things "appear" "Patternless". Like E.g a coin toss, It may appear to be "Random" 50/50 event but in reality if you were given all the variables like e.g wind etc. You could "predict" with more than 50% "certainty" the outcome.

BTW I totally agree with what @Franky1 said...

In science you cannot conclusively prove that something does not exist. Absence of proof that something exists indicates that something is likely not to exist.

Random is the opposite of pattern or ordered.
Absence of a pattern or order is an indication that it may be random.

what ordered the universe
well the big bang, initially and then the magnetic field and mass,weight of the particals impacting each other as they spread

take a grenade and stick nails around it
\ | /
- o -
/ | \

you can predict the direction the nails are going to go initially
however if you then change the density and size of nails and layer different ones. and then when the explosion happens. if you can view it fast enough. you see that some nails impact others changing the trajectory of some of the nails
however if you then use magnetic nails aswell when the explosion happens those nails can push and pull on other nails to make other nails change trajectory
if you know the math of the pull or push you can predict the trajectory.. even the ancient military knew this by knowing the weight and force of a arrow, cannonball vs the force of gravity/wind to become very accurate at hitting the target

nothing is actually truely random. chaos is just not knowing all the variables that caused the result
but randomness just needs to have too many variables involved to make it increasingly difficult to predict for it to be acceptable as not predictable

many tests are made by brute forcing the random generator over and over and over again to see if patterns emerge to show how limited the generator is.
other tests reverse engineer the generator to learn all variables involved to see if they can design a predictor

nothing is 100%.. but the less predictable something is the better.
no one can say nothing is ever going to be unpredictable. because if you put enough effort into finding out all the variables and combinations of possibilities eventually you could predict it. but as long as it would take many many lifetimes to predict a result for an event that only lasts a couple seconds. makes it labour/time expensive and not worth attempting. thus making it acceptable to use such generator

things like ECDSA are very predictable.. IF you know all the variables.
the formulae is very public and one of the variables is public. but the secret to ECDSA's success is by keeping one of the variables private. and that then makes solving a specific keypair difficult to a magnitude of millenia to bruteforce a result using the limited variables available to the public, yet the person that does know the secret variable can create a solution in milliseconds

Not knowing the pattern yet and patternless are two different things.
I think we've achieved such techonology in order to be able to write programs which are going to drop numbers their authors are impossible to predict because they do not have a pattern.
If the results weren't truly random, then we'd already see people breaking the code and winning massive amounts of bitcoins on dice games all accross the web.
I believe the incentive to do that is huge. But it hasn't happened. Why?

I think we are being hypocritical by saying that. We mock people who believe in a deity for believing in things like "Magic" yet we have our own words for describing things we can't explain yet. Rather than saying "Random", "We Don't know the pattern yet" would be a better way to put things forward as it will encourage us to look deeper into things and discover these new patterns. There is a difference in how an academic will see the word "Random" and what an average joe will make of it. I feel like when we use words like "Random" this leads to ignorance, Religious folks are a perfect example of this. I don't want to see Science become a thing which it separates itself from. So yes words do matter...

I think you might be getting too hung up on words.

Sure, we can't prove that the whole universe isn't deterministic and therefore can't prove that randomness exists at all.  But so what?

When we talk about using randomness the applications we talk about aren't at all troubled by that problem. They usually only care that the random numbers are uniformly distributed and are strongly unpredictable to other people.

It doesn't matter if some hypothetical god could see your dice rolls in advance when you're playing dice against grandma.

It's like complaining someone calls a ball a sphere, even though it can't be because it's made of copper and there is no way to pack the relevant atoms into an an absolutely perfect sphere.

well, that's the underlying line of enquiry in the entire field of physics/science. "It" is highly unlikely to be a "who", and there is abundant evidence that "it" is a series of phenomenological "what"s. No-one thus far knows any absolute answers.



depends who you ask. There are several theories concerning the fundamental nature of the universe, and they sometimes contradict one another.

Arguably, yes, you can create something that is provably random by exploiting the properties of quantum mechanical systems. For example experimental tests for violations of the Bell Inequality generate genuinely random results (provable when the detection loophole is closed). There has (inevitably) been some work done in this area. Take a look at this report, or this simple overview of it.

The crucial point here is that in quantum mechanics, repeating an experiment with the exact same initial conditions does not result in the exact same outcome. It's not like a coin toss, where if you can measure everything from the dirt on the coin to the air resistance, speed and angle of launch, friction, etc, and then repeat the conditions exactly atom-by-atom, you end up with the exact same result. And there's no guessable or deteriorating seed generator, either. It's pure quantum randomness, a law of nature.

The Bell Inequality test is crucial because this is how you prove that the result is pure and has not been tampered with - because nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

Edit: Have a look at this one, too.

If so, Who/What ordered this whole universe? What are the leading theories in this regard?


But then again it's our ignorance that we can't account for all the factors.


Thank you for this, but turns out it doesn't Prove Randomness exists in the real world. These are mere tests which give us an appearance that the data set is "Randomish".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_tests

sure, 100% disordered might not be possible. But the degree of entropy (i.e. disorder) can be measured by assessing and comparing states of ordered-ness, although presumably the technique for doing so is subject to the most refined definition we currently have determing unordered groups of numbers. I suspect, i.e. don't know, that this field of study in mathematics is still alive and well, if so there's certainly room for improvement on how we conceptualize randomness.

I personally believe that there is no such thing as "Random". Science is basically the study of Patterns. For the Patterns, we can't identify yet we through in the words like "Random / Chance/ Luck/ Chaos" etc. It's the equivalent to the word "Magic". I'm not a determinist btw. It's just our lack of knowledge at this point. One day given that we have enough resources to identify these "Random Patterns", they won't be "Random" anymore. So my question is why do we even use words like "Random" when we can't even prove Randomness exists...