Russell Standish wrote:
>I have posted a number of times on this subject, and from experience,
>I doubt I could convince you, even with a large reply. However, I
>consider both the phenomna of "free will", and quantum mechanics to be
>evidence of a random oracle at play. Note - I use the word _evidence_
>advisedly - its not proof. It is possible to explain away these
>phenomena by more straightforward mechanistic means, however, all
>these explanations I've seen to date have been thin and unconvincing.
Wouldn't a random oracle be able to run the algorith "pick a random integer
between 0 and infinity, with an equal chance of each one?" This would seem
to lead to paradoxes--for example, if two such numbers are chosen and
written on slips of paper, then whichever slip we look at first, we can say
there is a 100% chance the other one is larger.
Also, I don't think a random oracle really solves the "free will" problem
any better than a classical computer with a random number generator built
in--why do you think it does?
Jesse Mazer
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Received on Fri Feb 09 2001 - 22:58:45 PST