this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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I mean, here's a few random numbers out of my head: 1 9 5 2 6 8 6 3 4 0. I don't get it, why is it supposed to be hard? Sure, they're not "truly" random, but they sure look random /:
You have one of each number except 7, and you're deliberately avoiding doubles and runs of consecutive numbers. Human attempts at randomness tend to be very idealized in that way, and as a result, less random.
Here's what my brain came up with
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 1 5
Crazy lucky, this probably would've spawned 3 extra ender pearls
My favourite example of this is that IIRC itunes pushed an update that made the shuffle feature less random because they were getting complaints about it not being random enough
I bet the shuffle algorithm is sample with replacement.
They may look random but arent truly random. Computers are terrible at it too. Thats why cryptography requires external sources to generate "true" random numbers. For example, cloudflare uses a wall of lava lamps to generate randomness for encryption keys.
That's so cool.
Here's another set of random digits
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
:3
After all, there's no fundamental reason for why it can't all just be a repeat of the same number. But it doesn't look random, right? So what is randomness?
The most popular lottery numbers are 1,2,3,4,5,6 because we are human and don't understand randomness.
There are 10 trillion ways to combine a sequence that long, so I think you would expect to see that exact sequence every 10 trillion digits of a randomly generated decimal sequence on average, which isn't that many to a modern computer, so almost certainly that has already happened by pure accident.
And randomness can be defined as entropy, which you check statistically. You can never be certain, you can only increase your level of confidence. Here is how random.org does it:
https://www.random.org/analysis/
And this shows you what some of those analyses look like in real time:
https://www.random.org/statistics/
If you're not joking, the fact you have no repetition/duplicates of numbers is a pattern that would make it easy to start to predict next number. Numberphile has nice demonstration of how predictable human randomness is, it's in the first 3 minutes of the video.
792654349324138383027654826548192874651875306480462765726382
I don't know man, that's pretty random. I mean do you think you can predict the next numbers in the sequence just from the ones already there? Would have to predict the next batch, the way I made these come in batches. I can't exactly produce 1 number at a time from banging on my number-pad.
I am 99.8% sure that your sequence of numbers is not random. Your brain purposefully avoided repeating a digit. The probability of no repeated digits in 60 numbers is 1- (9/10)^60
Here's some random numbers
8005882300
Absolutely. And if you typed enough there would be enough information to tell if you typed that on a keyboard or phone, which fingers you used, and how you were feeling that day.
I can make an educated guess what numbers are most likely, yes.
For example, you have no repeat number sequences, so I can take a guess that the number 2 is less likely to be next.
Humans have certain tendencies that makes them want to make a number only seem more random. Also, you've probably seen those mentalists correctly guessing seemingly random stuff. Tells you enough how easily people are fooled into thinking something specific, so random can you actually be.
you can just throw a coin x times and here you go true randomness and in convenient binary too
computers can't fathom our coin tossing abilities
though truth to be said it's more because we are just so bad at tossing coins. not even AI can predict the result of what will happen when we start to throw shit around
I bet it is even more random when you throw a coin while being inebriated.
Actually say random numbers when you are drunk shitless and they will be random. Checkmate
Clearly you don't understand what the discussion is about, or you wouldn't give such an hilariously bad example.
Yes practically, predicting a coin toss would be very hard. But if you take every into account (gravity, wind direction, coin center of balance, etc) you can calculate the result, making it not truly random.
lol good luck predicting my coin toss
Heads.
Noooo, you were just lucky this is impossible
It’s always heads here tho
I've got some more random numbers:
8 6 7 5 3 0 9 1 1 2 3 5 8 1 2 4 8 1 6 3 2
It's not that they look random is enough - They need to BE random.
Recheck your lava lamp Wall of Entropy and generate some real rands, scrub. (/s)
Jenny has to be so sick of those phone calls after ~40 years
:D. I have used this strip on multiple occasions.
It's a shame Scott Adams past work is tainted by his political statements.