[comp.ai] Objective Uncertainty

lag@cseg.uucp (L. Adrian Griffis) (09/22/88)

In article <443@quintus.UUCP>, ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
> >None whatever.  The conjecture is almost instantly disprovable: no Turing
> >machine can output a true random number, but a physical system can.
> Reference please!  This is a _staggering_ result!  I can believe that it
> is true, but it is astonishing to learn that it has been _shown_.  (I
> strongly suspect that Robert Firth has assumed here what he set out to
> prove.)  How do you tell when "a true random number" has been output, anyway?

I think there was an article on the notition of Objective Uncertainty in
Scientific American in the April or May issue (I know there was such an
article, but I'm not sure about the date).  It looked to me like physics
was close to driving the last nail into the coffin of the Hidden Variable
theory.  Does anyone else out there remember it??

-- 
  UseNet:  lag@cseg                      L. Adrian Griffis
  BITNET:  AG27107@UAFSYSB

joe@modcomp.UUCP (09/24/88)

L. Adrian Griffis writes:

> I think there was an article on the notition of Objective Uncertainty in
> Scientific American in the April or May issue (I know there was such an
> article, but I'm not sure about the date).  It looked to me like physics
> was close to driving the last nail into the coffin of the Hidden Variable
> theory.  Does anyone else out there remember it??

Yes, it was "The Reality of the Quantum World", Scientific American,
January 1988.  My understanding was that, unless someone is able to
poke a hole in the experiments, hidden variable's are dead.  PS: these
experiments are really neat, friends; this article is worth looking up.

Joe Korty
uunet!modcomp!joe