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From: telford@threetek.dialix.oz.au (Telford Tendys)
Subject: Re: Minsky's new article
In-Reply-To: dnor01@cs.aukuni.ac.nz's message of 19 Nov 1994 02:31:50 GMT
Message-ID: <1994Nov24.235749.18364@threetek.dialix.oz.au>
Organization: 3Tek Systems Pty Ltd., N.S.W., Australia
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Date: Thu, 24 Nov 1994 23:57:49 GMT
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> Free will is like statistics. Take a roulette wheel. On any spin, 
> there's a 50% chance of getting either red or black. However, if we 
> have complete knowledge of the situation, from the initial force 
> vector applied to the ball to the frictional coefficients of the 
> surfaces and the air, then it is feasible to predict the result. In 
                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> fact, gambling cheats have done exactly this using radio links to 
> computers.

Pull the other one, it has bells on. Once that ball has done ten laps
or so, then fallen onto the knobby bits and bounced a few times there
is NO WAY you (or the biggest supercomputer) is going to link the
initial conditions to the final result. It is possible for the
house to cheat by slightly modifying the wheel but, although this
will alter the statistics at the end of the day, it won't provide
a prediction for a given spin.

As to whether it is fundamentally impossible to make such predictions
by law of nature or whether we are just not technically advanced
enough yet -- that is a little more difficult.
However, I put my chips on the square that says there will ALWAYS
be events that are NOT predictable.

	- Tel
