Please find my remarks interspaced below. John M ----- Original Message ----- From: "Russell Standish" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 2:11 AM Subject: Re: "Free Will Theorem" Russell wrote in his attachment-style post: ------------------------ [RS]: Since we live in a quantum mechanical world, randomness is inherently quantum mechanical. Chaos, as a classical mechanism will amplify quantum randomness. [JM]: Rather: "we call the world we live in a QM-al one, because based on the limited information humanity gathered over the past 2-3 millennia a QM was derived and adjusted with our limited view of the world", so the statement should fit. Earlier such statements did expire and we have no proof that future enrichment of the epistemic cognitive inventory we get will not change the QM-based worldview as it did the Flat earth earlier. [RS]: However, from the point of view of extracting sufficient randomness to fool opponents in an evolutionary setting, classical chaos is good enough. No agent will have the computational power of Laplace's daemon [JM]: poor daemon still could only compute known facts. Future discoveries are hard to include into ongoing computations - however Ms Daemon may have deeper insight than our cognitive inventory (knowledge-base) of today. [RS]: I'm dealing with these questions in an artificial life system - Tierra to be precise. I have compared the original Tierra code, with one in which the random no. generator is replaced with a true random no. generator called HAVEGE, and another simulation in which the RNG is replaced with a cryptographically secure RNG called ISAAC. The results to date (and this _is_ work in progress) is that there is a distinct difference between the original Tierra PRNG, and the other two generators, but that there is little difference between HAVEGE and ISAAC. This seems to indicate that algorithmic randomness can be good enough to fool learning algorithms. [JM]: I am sure you do a decent job. Tierra, however, does not include facts that will be discovered (observed?) centuries from now. So the system is based on a limited model of today's (yesterday's?) modeling. It may give valuable answers to situations we face now, but your remark about applying the unknowable (RNGs) does not secure the outcome to match the future ways we may find later on. Of course this is the way to do research, science and the (limited model based) results are treasures for the further work. Our entire technology has been developed this way.
John Mikes (PS: you assure us that the 'attachment format' you apply is harmless. I agree, but to read it one has to open the attachment, then open the text (4 clicks) and it appears on a different screen from the one a reply can be written. Several members give us the convenience of reading their posts on the page where the list is answerable. JM, just an old grouch.)
