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> You're just talking past me, bro. Sorry for over explaning, but I feel it necessary. Sticking with your example and making more formal. Name it pick function and let its three modes, random, deterministic and preference. In the random mode, the probability of picking one from the inputs are equal to picking to any other. In the deterministic mode, with the same inputs the function always picking the same and the probability of others are zero, but if the inputs change or any input, it could change the picked one. In the preference mode the function not just picking one, but making a sorted list of the inputs. In the preference mode, changing one input not changing the others sorting. In this mode using pick function on several inputs you got some information about the inputs overall probability distribution aka entropy (more precisely entropy is the measure of that). The important from this, determinism not imply preference, but not random also. Cryptographic hash functions doing the extreme version of this determinism, the output is well "distributed", but not random. (PS: Sometime that characteristic called pseudorandomness, that is how PRNGs works with random seed) Deterministic pick applied to random pick just less random than random pick alone on the same set, because random pick has the maximum of the entropy and adding some deterministic part just reducing that. But most people not picking with a well distributed deterministic function in their mind, more likely they pick with preference, which is I think much worse. So, that why I call it the bare minimum. |