[eu-gene] Re: Generative or not?

[Paul Harrison]

On 5/10/06, Michael Gogins <gogins at pipeline.com> wrote:
> Quantum randomness is not a fact, it's part of a theory we use to explain what appear to be random phenomena. So in your remark, if I take "quantum randomness" to refer to the theory itself (than which we have no better), the theory POSTULATES true randomness. If I take "quantum randomness" to refer to the phenomena themselves, your remark cannot really be evaluated as it stands; either the phenomena are satisfied by the theory, or they are not. If they are, then we must assume that the phenomena do reflect a reality that is truly random. Theory, in physics, is what we do know as best as we CAN know. If they are not, then we have falsified quantum mechanics and we either have found a better theory, or we have proved that we simply do not understand what is going on. If we don't understand what's going on, anything we say about it is, by definition, meaningless. If we have found a better theory, it could as easily be a slightly different (but still truly random) distribution, or it could be some pseudo-random process. I suppose this last eventuality is what you were getting at?....
>

I'm saying there's no way we could ever distinguish between true
randomness and sufficiently good pseudo-randomness (the requirements
for which are quite modest [1]) in quantum physics. Therefore we
should not postulate theories that distinguish between these two
possibilites.

What I think this means is that we should not attach great
significance to true randomness. eg we should not use it to explain
consciousness, or claim that art that uses it is ineffably better than
art that uses discrete and repeatable pseudo-randomness.

--
Dr. Paul Harrison

[1] As Dave pointed out, pseudo-random number generators are usually
very simple. Even cryptographically secure pseudo-random number
generators are quite simple (if you're worried about the quality of
your randomness, just use SHA or MD5...).

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