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> This has the property that if even a single person answers uniformly at random Has any human ever proven they're capable of this? Generating truly random seq
by throwaway287391 7y ago
> This has the property that if even a single person answers uniformly at random
Has any human ever proven they're capable of this? Generating truly random sequences is more or less impossible for humans AFAIK. (E.g., see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19336754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19336754 which challenges you to do just that. Spoiler: you will probably fail miserably.)
It's an interesting idea, but in practice I think relying on the assumption that "even" one person is truly answering randomly (let alone uniformly at random) is a non-starter. But perhaps if there are enough people, the resulting sequence blends enough entropy together to get something that looks almost like a uniform random variable anyway? It would be interesting to test empirically.
- b_tterc_p 7y agohttps://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25 https://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25 Philosophically, no it is not possible, though neither can any natural phenomenon for which we reasonably rely on for randomness. Practically I suppose your goal is just to generate numbers such that the next number cannot be predicted given only the previous numbers but also without considering any outside knowledge. Potentially possible. Potentially impossible to test. If you can beat the test, it probably just means your method beats that specific test
- seventhtiger 7y agoAren't there algorithms which reliably beat humans at rock paper scissors?
- b_tterc_p 7y agoThere are algorithms that beat most humans, because humans don’t play randomly. Conversely there are humans that can beat the human-beating algorithms reliably because the algorithms don’t play randomly either.
- OscarCunningham 7y ago"Just use your free will" https://github.com/elsehow/aaronson-oracle https://github.com/elsehow/aaronson-oracle
- dorgo 7y agoNo free will needed. You see the predictions. Let the model learn and then change your sequence. It takes some time for the model to adjust. This way you can get the prediction rate to 50% or below.
- moultano 7y agoI found myself reliably beating it just by making the runs of one letter longer than I would naturally if I was just trying to be random.