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Technically, it's not actually uniform, or "random" - it only has to be indistinguishable from random, e.g. if you had access to a true random source and a pseu
by Tainnor 3y ago
Technically, it's not actually uniform, or "random" - it only has to be indistinguishable from random, e.g. if you had access to a true random source and a pseudo-random one, it should be computationally infeasible to distinguish them.
- nine_k 3y agoGiven a finite amount of sample.values, you can always find a polynomial to match the values. You can only proclaim that something is "truly random" on epistemological grounds, assuming that true randomness is somehow exposed by the universe. This holds under quantum physics, but not under classical mechanics. Unless there is some quantum effect, RNGs based on fluid dynamics, like lava lamps, may be completely deterministic, we just don't know how to set their initial conditions precisely enough.to reproduce a phase trajectory.
- adrianN 3y agoYour polynomial has no predictive value in almost all cases.
- nine_k 3y agoYes. Finding out the nature of a PRNG and its initial state would allow one to predict next values, at least theoretically, that is, if it can be computed faster than the values are generated by the process we're looking at. But the presence or absence of such a function for a naturally occurring process is, again, an epistemological question. That is, whether we can reverse-engineer the universe deeply enough. Unless we find its source code, we're stuck with retrofitting some formulas, and a "random process" is such for which we can't retrofit any better description than a statistical one.
- Tainnor 3y agoYou're right that we can never find conclusive empirical evidence for something being truly random, but we can say with confidence that a PRNG is not random because we can look at the algorithm.