Re: Simulating the rolling of dices to produce truly random numbers?

[Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com>]

On Thu, 11 Jan 2018 01:00:42 +0800, "Mr. Man-wai Chang"
<toylet.toylet@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 11/1/2018 00:59, Robert Wessel wrote:
>>
>> Again, if you do it deterministically, you've not created true
>> randomness.  If you have a way of doing non-deterministically, which
>> means you have a non-deterministic input to your system, just start
>> from there, and don't go through the silly exercise of simulating the
>> physical motion of dice.
>>
>> IOW, you can't create real random dice rolls unless you have an actual
>> source of true randomness to input to your dice simulation algorithm.
>
>So there is mechanics that could never be modeled using mathematics and 
>computers?


According to most interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, there are
phenomenon that are objectively unpredictable.  For example, there is
no apparent way, and if QM is correct, no possible way, to determine
when an unstable atomic nucleus will decay, not matter how much
information we have about that nucleus before hand.  We can make
*statistical* statements about such things (eg. half of all carbon-14
atoms in a lump of coal will decay in 5700 years), but the individual
events are not predictable (there's no telling when a particular
carbon-14 will decay).