Good piece [LWN.net]

Good piece

Posted Nov 30, 2012 0:30 UTC (Fri) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106)
In reply to: Good piece by davidescott
Parent article: LCE: Don't play dice with random numbers

> To me it makes much more sense to say. The Universe IS. ... There is no such thing as "time."

I think I see your problem. Without time, randomness is indeed impossible. There is no point in talking about random events when you can directly observe the entirety of space-time; from that perspective, there are no probabilities, only facts. This discussion, fortunately, was about a more human perspective, in which the past may be known but knowledge of the future is beyond our reach.

> If you get to reference something outside the sequence like "PI" then so should I. I will thereby reference the output of your transistor in my deterministic non-local Bohmian description of the dynamics of our static universe.

You can reference things outside of the sequence, but only if they are knowable before the sequence is generated. PI is known, being a fundamental mathematical constant, but the output of the transistor is not.

However, I would say that it is meaningless to talk about whether a specific _sequence_ is random; what matters is whether the _process_ of producing the sequence introduced new information into the system. (The same process must, of course, destroy some existing information in order that the entropy of the system as a whole remains monotonically increasing.)

If one can predict the result of a measurement with certainty using only information knowable beforehand, then the measurement itself introduces no new information, and thus is not random. Otherwise, the result of the measurement is random, with entropy greater than zero and less than or equal to the number of significant bits measured.

> Don't tell me something *IS* (in the descriptive sense) random just because you can't predict the next number.

It's not a question of whether you or I could predict the next number; the question is whether the rules of the system permit _anyone_ to predict the next number with 100% certainty, given all the information which it is possible for them to know. Even in a completely deterministic system it may not be possible, even in theory, for any one person to know all the initial conditions which can affect the result.

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Good piece

Posted Nov 30, 2012 4:03 UTC (Fri) by davidescott (guest, #58580) [Link] (7 responses)

> You can reference things outside of the sequence, but only if they are knowable before the sequence is generated. PI is known, being a fundamental mathematical constant, but the output of the transistor is not.

PI is just the limit of a sequence. It happens to be particularly useful in Mathematical theorems, but is it any less random because of that? Which of the following is not a random number, but a useful mathematical constant?

0.1039089930584351
0.2519318504932542
0.5772156649015328
0.6394164761104365
0.7741085613465057
0.9458817764941707

The number being recognizable is not a sufficient definition. Its like the old joke about the mathematician and the license plate. "KZJ-1249" what are the chances of seeing that! Every real number is special in its own way, but I agree the process is more important than the actual output. One wants to compare multiple instances of the same RNG process, recognizing that a true RNG almost never (but not never) outputs a sequence that is "obviously not random."

> I think I see your problem. Without time, randomness is indeed impossible.

In a some fundamental sense that is true. The larger point is that any deterministic system is "without time" in this sense, and that contrary to commonly held views Classical Mechanics is not deterministic, and QM can be deterministic.

So when people say QM is random, mechanics is not, they are usually assuming a non-deterministic interpretation of QM, which is not required by experimental evidence (only non-locality is required).

> the question is whether the rules of the system permit _anyone_ to predict the next number with 100% certainty, given all the information which it is possible for them to know

This is perhaps the closest to a meaningful definition of "random," but it depends upon the validity of the uncertainty principle, and who qualifies as _anyone_. It is in fact what I said earlier, that QM is how we define "random", not that QM *is* random.

In particular since physical law can never be proven complete and correct, "random" can never be proven to be correctly defined. QM is our best understanding of the rules of the system, and thus our current best standard for "randomness." If we find the rules to be wrong, and that the uncertainty principle is not fundamental to future models of physics then our definition of "random" will change, and something else might be brought forward as the standard for "randomness."

In this respect saying "QM is random" is vacuous, and is the same as saying "QM is our best understanding of physics." Before we had QM we had Brownian motion which could be have been appropriately called "random" although we now call it merely "chaotic."

Good piece

Posted Nov 30, 2012 8:47 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (1 responses)

This is perhaps the closest to a meaningful definition of "random," but it depends upon the validity of the uncertainty principle, and who qualifies as _anyone_.

Why does this definition involve the uncertainty principle, at all? It depends on information theory alone: that the information held by any party is limited and can be computed.

Again, we go back to the beginning: the next number can be decided by a chaotic system (such as a coin toss), a statistical system (such as thermal noise), a truly quantum system (such as the spin of a particle in a pair) or just a clever adversary (as in cryptography). As long as the next number cannot be guessed by someone, it appears random. If the next number cannot be guessed by anyone (i.e. is not correlated to previous values), it is truly random. The difference is subtle but essential.

With this latest rehashing of the old deterministic conundrum I will leave the discussion, if you don't mind.

Good piece

Posted Nov 30, 2012 14:00 UTC (Fri) by davidescott (guest, #58580) [Link]

> the information held by any party is limited

by the uncertainty principle. Uncertainty is why information is limited.

Uncertainty is the only reason (currently provided by physics) why we cannot propose the existence of an advanced species on another planet capable of mapping the positions and momenta of all particles in the universe.

If such a species existed then they would be able to correlate all outputs and nothing would be truly random.

Yes its determinism, but I don't see how it is a conundrum. Its all fairly straightforward. If there is determinism, and if there are no limits on information that can be gained about a system, then there are no "physical secrets" and no true randomness.

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My only point in bringing all this up was to correct wolfgang's false statements concerning the determinism of classical mechanics, the non-determinism of QM, and the supposed relationship between randomness and this non-determinism.

a) Classical Mechanics has no limits on information, but contrary to what many seem to believe it is not deterministic.

If Classical Mechanics were a true theory for the universe we could still define "truly random" values, by say counting the number of space invaders passing through a detector over a fixed time interval. This would be randomness deriving from the non-determinism of the universe.

Classical Mechanics is a provably false theory, and thankfully no space invaders have ever been seen.

b) QM has limits on information, and that alone is enough to define some notion of randomness. Contrary to what many seem to believe, QM is not non-deterministic. The Copenhagen interpretation is non-deterministic and very popular, but it is not the only interpretation. The Bohm interpretation is deterministic.

c) Your subtle differences are not lost on me. YOUR definition of random (random := next number cannot be guessed by anyone) is a definition based on the limits of information. It is crucial what "anyone" can do. Those limits are derived from the limits on what can be learned about other systems in the universe. It has absolutely nothing to do with determinism.

This definition is only correct if the uncertainty principle is not violated, which is why I say that "QM defines random" and not "QM is random". A Bohmian sees no randomness in the outcome of the quantum process, it is all predetermined. A Bohmian defines random as outcomes which are unpredictable due to the limits on information, which is again your definition.

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Final remark. You state:
> If the next number cannot be guessed by anyone (i.e. is not correlated to previous values), it is truly random. The difference is subtle but essential.

I'm going to pick on your parenthetical remark. The definition proposed by the parenthetical "anything not correlated to previous values is truly random" is either false, or a bad definition (depending on exactly how it is read).

Bohmian QM is a system where outcomes can be unpredictable, but they are not in a philosophical sense "uncorrelated" because everything is mediated through hidden variables and is fully deterministic. This is nonsense to a Bohmian.

Or maybe this is a practical definition for a Copenhagenist (who believes in intrinsic randomness). Take the outputs and run them through an auto-correlation test. If they fail they are non-random, if they pass they are random. The problem here is that any auto-correlation test has a confidence interval, and has a false positive and false negative rate. Just because a RNG passes the auto-correlation test doesn't mean it isn't just psuedo-random with a long period so you got a false-negative, and just because an over-volted transistor fails a test doesn't mean it wasn't obeying QM, its just a false-positive.

Good piece

Posted Nov 30, 2012 17:00 UTC (Fri) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (1 responses)

> Which of the following is not a random number, but a useful mathematical constant?

I just said that it's not the numbers which are random, but rather the process which produced them. Any of those numbers could be produced by a random process, or a universal constant useful in some context. The output of a random process could (with infinitesimal probability) be equal to PI to an arbitrary number of digits, and still be random; the output of a deterministic process with known initial conditions could be completely unrecognizable without actually repeating the process, and pass all the statistical heuristics for randomness, and yet the process would still not be random.

> The larger point is that any deterministic system is "without time" in this sense, and that contrary to commonly held views Classical Mechanics is not deterministic, and QM can be deterministic.

I'm not arguing with that. True randomness does not require non-determinism, provided no one can know all the initial conditions. The difference is that, given non-determinism, a process can be random even _with_ complete knowledge of the initial conditions.

>> the question is whether the rules of the system permit _anyone_ to predict the next number with 100% certainty, given all the information which it is possible for them to know
> This is perhaps the closest to a meaningful definition of "random," but it depends upon the validity of the uncertainty principle, and who qualifies as _anyone_. It is in fact what I said earlier, that QM is how we define "random", not that QM *is* random.

First, it doesn't depend on QM at all, or the uncertainty principle. QM (whether non-local or non-deterministic) is one system which defines cases where the number cannot be predicted, but it is hardly the only one. Classical mechanics also works, if the initial conditions are unknowable. Second, "anyone" simply means "anyone"; there are no qualifications.

> In particular since physical law can never be proven complete and correct, "random" can never be proven to be correctly defined.

Whether a physical process is random does depend on the physics of the process. If we're wrong about the physical laws, we may also be wrong about whether the process is random.

That doesn't really affect the definition of "random" so much as the system to which the definition is applied: what the system permits one to know, and whether that knowledge is sufficient to predict the next result given the system's rules.

Good piece

Posted Nov 30, 2012 17:30 UTC (Fri) by davidescott (guest, #58580) [Link]

Agreed. I don't think you and I disagree on anything.

Good piece

Posted Nov 21, 2013 14:24 UTC (Thu) by mirabilos (subscriber, #84359) [Link] (2 responses)

> KZJ-1249

Care to explain to those non-USA people among us?

Good piece

Posted Nov 21, 2013 14:42 UTC (Thu) by cladisch (✭ supporter ✭, #50193) [Link] (1 responses)

The point of the joke is that the license plate is completely random without any obvious pattern.

Good piece

Posted Nov 21, 2013 14:48 UTC (Thu) by mirabilos (subscriber, #84359) [Link]

Ah, thanks.