• kaidezee@lemmy.ml
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    18 hours ago

    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 /:

    • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      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.

    • piccolo@sh.itjust.works
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      16 hours ago

      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.

      • FermionWrangler@lemm.ee
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        15 hours ago

        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.

        • Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          15 hours ago

          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.

          • 𝓔𝓶𝓶𝓲𝓮@lemm.ee
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            11 hours ago

            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

            • Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              3 hours ago

              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.

    • Wizzard@lemm.ee
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      18 hours ago

      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)

    • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      17 hours ago

      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?

      • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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        6 hours ago

        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/