Let’s say I provide you with a string of random numbers copied from the best 
random number table you care to offer.  No, we go to Jon, and holding the table 
in our laps, we correctly guess every number in the sequence.  Were those 
numbers random?  Or to make it  even easier, let Jon make a judgement of the 
randomness of the sequence and then let the sequence recycle and repeat it self 
exactly.  

 

I know that these are “citizen” questions.  I have never quite grasped the 
concept of randomness (as you see). 

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> 
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 4:12 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

 

Hmm.  Every third number in this apparently random sequence is even.  Order?  
What's order? Nonrandomness?

 

On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 2:25 PM <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:

All, 

 

I feel like this relates to a discussion held during Nerd Hour at the end of 
last Friday’s vfriam.  I was arguing  that given, say, a string of numbers, and 
no information external to that string, that no AI could detect “order” unless 
it already possessed a theory of what order is.  I found the discussion 
distressing because I thought the point was trivial but all the smart people in 
the conversation were arguing against me. 

 

n 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> 
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > On 
Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2020 3:15 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world

 

The success of Google's deep learning program in predicting protein folding is 
impressive. Maybe that is what he meant.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03348-4

 

-J.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: Steve Smith <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > 

Date: 11/30/20 21:55 (GMT+01:00) 

To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>  

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New ways of understanding the world 

 

Or a "model of nothing fit to everything we know: useful or merely wrong?"

On 11/30/20 1:41 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:

Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired, asks if a computer can find a 
theory of everything merely by learning from data. Unfortunately most deep 
learning models are like a black box which delivers good results but is hard to 
understand. Would a theory of everything be a theory of nothing? It reminds me 
of Russell Standish's book "theory of nothing".

https://www.wired.com/2008/06/pb-theory/ 

 

-J.

 

 

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-- 

Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918

 

Research:  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

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