How random is a shuffled deck?

[Yardbird]

Hey Schwza... You're not too technical, huh? I appologise in advance for the following rebuttal---pointed as it may be, it is not intended as a flame.

[ QUOTE ]
An egg-head response... According to our current understand of quantum mechanics, there is an incredibly high amount of true randomness in nature.
Measure the location of a particle and then measure its location again in one second, and it is impossible to know with certainty where the particle will be. We can only calculate a probability distribution corresponding to many different places it could be measured to be.

This lack of knowledge is not a product of a lack of technology or methodology - quantum mechanics states that it is impossible to know where the particle will be. Its measured position is truly random.

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<font color="red">False!</font> <font color="blue"> There is merely a high volume of percieved randomness in quantum mechanics. </font> The wanna-be egg-heads who profess that particle motion is truely random (nothing can be random in a closed system) are just too full of their own egos to admit that they don't yet understand all the factors involved. They've got their heads so far up their own asses that they have lost their sense of perspective (which is quite common among book-smart academics). I can only assume that you, Schwza, are regurgitating what you have been told or read that you don't personally understand, or; perhaps, in an attempt to put your thoughts in lay-man's terms you have over-simplified the facts. I don't have five degrees; but, I am smart enough to know that those statements are technically incorrect.

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Incidentally, Ultimatebet's card-shuffling algorithm uses physical data that operates on the same principal.

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By that I assume you mean that they have adopted a methodology similar to that which I proposed here some time ago.

[daryn]

if nothing is truly random then given the initial conditions of the universe, one should theoretically be able to predict all events in the future.

random numbers are real and possible.

[blackaces13]

[ QUOTE ]
if nothing is truly random then given the initial conditions of the universe, one should theoretically be able to predict all events in the future.


[/ QUOTE ]

Thoeretically, if someone (or some instrument) could actually understand and process ALL factors occuring simultaneously in the universe and how they affect each other, then it seems at least reasonable to consider that they (it) could predict the future indefinitely.

However, this being or machine would need to be 100% aware of all things including the individual neurons firing in every living animals brain on earth or a hydrogen atom's movement on one of Jupiter's moons. It would not only need to be aware of all action in the entire universe at more than a subatomic level, but would also be able to precisely predict how all of these things affect one another. Clearly this is impossible but its not unimaginable.

Cause and effect pretty much eliminates any chance of randomness in the true sense of the word doesn't it?

[Yardbird]

[ QUOTE ]
if nothing is truly random then given the initial conditions of the universe, one should theoretically be able to predict all events in the future.

random numbers are real and possible.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, theoretically, you could predict future events, if you had an omnicient perspective of the present (sufficient to register all the causes and effects into account) and sufficient computing capacity (and any interest whatsoever) [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]; but, supposing that real choices exist to be made (in contrast to the ability to calculate how other actors with so-called "free-will" might choose to act based on the way that their nervous system would interpret the chemical reactions triggered by external stimuli), such calculations could only predict so much at a given moment.

In a way, this is an argument for fatalism, with the exception that all sentient corporeal beings have an ironic illusion of choice because they are not self-aware enough to know in advance how their past experiences and endocrine systems will interact to provide the impetus for their reactions to a given stimulus in the context of their (space-time) environment.

I could go on like this for quite some time... It would make a good subject for table talk [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[John Feeney]

[ QUOTE ]
... because they are not self-aware enough to know in advance how their past experiences and endocrine systems will interact...

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Strangely specific - that endocrine sytem comment. [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]
What's this endocrine secret you know, Yardbird? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] BTW, some of those songs were pretty good.

[Yardbird]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
... because they are not self-aware enough to know in advance how their past experiences and endocrine systems will interact...

[/ QUOTE ]

Strangely specific - that endocrine sytem comment. [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]
What's this endocrine secret you know, Yardbird? [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] BTW, some of those songs were pretty good.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sometimes I outsmart even myself [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] But if you're thinking that my handle is an allusion to the '60's band of the same name, that wasn't my intention; but, it amuses me because you're not the first person to make that assumption, and it typifies my table-image goal at the poker table: to obfuscate my ulterior intentions with plausible counter-motivations. Of course that statement doesn't really make sense unless I reveal the primary source of my handle...

In gambler's parlance of nearly a century ago, a "yard" was $100, and a "bird" was an easy mark, and in that time the compound version "yardbird" was the bookie's perfect underground casino customer. I picked it out of the glossary of one of John Scarne's books. Curiously, it's a term that seems to have fallen out of common usage in this century... I expect that it may even have been the nebulous source for the rock group's name (I checked out some Yardbirds' fan sites, and none of them seem to be aware of the definition I've just disclosed).

[Yardbird]

My philosophy exactly! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[John Feeney]

[ QUOTE ]
But if you're thinking that my handle is an allusion to the '60's band of the same name, that wasn't my intention; but, it amuses me because you're not the first person to make that assumption, and it typifies my table-image goal at the poker table: to obfuscate my ulterior intentions with plausible counter-motivations.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, just to underline how almost tediously multilayered things get: I didn't think the musical Yardbirds were necessarily the source of your handle. I figured they might be, but that given the youthful age of the majority of posters here these days there was a strong chance the handle referred to something else. Yet it seemed that the most fun I could have with it would be simply to say whatever I'd say if I fully assumed the Yardbirds were the inspiration, on the off chance you'd be less then fully familiar with them and hence jolted into a realization of the broader interpretations to which your handle might be subjected. Call it a gamble, I guess. [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

Well, I think I just subjected you to an explication of a sequence of underlying thought of an utterly routine sort, but of the type usually kept to the thinker for fear of lulling the reader or listener into a deep, deep sleep.
[img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[daryn]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In risposta di:</font><hr />

However, this being or machine would need to be 100% aware of all things including the individual neurons firing in every living animals brain on earth or a hydrogen atom's movement on one of Jupiter's moons

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this being or machine wouldn't have to be aware of things like neurons firing in living animals. i'm saying given the initial conditions of the universe at the time of its creation. all of those neurons firing and jupiter's moons' movements are all just effects of the universe being created.

[blackaces13]

[ QUOTE ]
all of those neurons firing and jupiter's moons' movements are all just effects of the universe being created.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're right. But I was looking at it as though this omniscient being or machine came into existence long after the universe came into existence.


In anycase, I'm curious as to how you would respond to my statement that cause and effect and true "randomness" are mutually exclusive.