From: gts (gts@optexinc.com)
Date: Mon Sep 16 2002 - 17:48:57 MDT
Eugene, sorry for the delay in replying
you wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Sep 2002, gts wrote:
>
>> I'm not convinced that a noisy microphone is a true RNG...
>
> I'm not truly convinced that anything is a "true RNG".
I can appreciate that, but you are in effect stating only that perhaps
quantum phenomena are not undetermined, which puts you into the realist
camp with David Bohm and others who postulate the existence of yet to be
discovered "hidden variables" that determine if a so-called wave
function should collapse into a given state. But this only takes us into
the quagmire of the interpretations of QM, which is another thread that
I see is in progress here on the list, and with which I don't at the
moment have the time or the patience. (About 15 years ago I spent
countless months debating the various interpretations of QM on a
pre-internet online service called GEnie... on a philosophy bulletin
board of which I was also a moderator... and I'm not sure I have the
time or energy to resume that exhausting debate!)
Can we agree then that according to the present state of scientific
knowledge, quantum phenomena are more likely than any other type of
phenomena to be both unpredictable and undetermined? And can we also
agree that, optimally, random numbers should be those that are most
likely to be both unpredictable and undetermined according to the
present state of scientific knowledge?
> It's basically a faith based decision. "In laws of physics we
> trust". Even while we know for certain we haven't got the whole
picture.
Yes, but as the saying goes, we have no choice but to hang our hats on
something.
-gts
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