bwk@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Barry W. Kort) (09/20/88)
I don't know if God plays dice with the universe. But I do know that us humans do play dice, and the outcome of our games does effect the course of history. Casting lots is as old as recorded history. --Barry Kort
ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe) (09/21/88)
In article <40141@linus.UUCP> bwk@mbunix (Kort) writes: >I don't know if God plays dice with the universe. But I do know that >us humans do play dice, and the outcome of our games does effect the >course of history. Casting lots is as old as recorded history. Yes, we humans play dice. But that doesn't prove they deliver _RANDOM_ results. "Unpredictable", "random", and "independent" are distinguishable properties. Dice could be as determined as the digits of pi and still be as humanly unpredictable.
bwk@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Barry W. Kort) (09/22/88)
In article <453@quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: >Yes, we humans play dice. But that doesn't prove they deliver _RANDOM_ >results. "Unpredictable", "random", and "independent" are distinguishable >properties. Dice could be as determined as the digits of pi and still be >as humanly unpredictable. Richard, since we have departed from the original question to a technical dialogue on the meaning of "random", could you supply us with your definitions of "random", "unpredictable", and "independent"? Are there other related terms in the lexicon that we can further explore and distinguish? (After that, we can see if any of them capture the the metaphor of "God playing dice with the universe".) --Barry Kort