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by packetlost 1407 days ago
Randomness is the basis for all life and seems necessary for there to be any sort of curiosity component to intelligence. At a macro level, it seems to represent breaks in cycles that allow for change. Further, if our own decision making amounts to weighted distributions in neuron paths, how would a brain resolve an equally weighted distribution (no matter how small the chance of that happening is).

Edit: To further explain, I apply the basic principles that govern life to all facets of life, all the way up to the complexities of human society, language, etc.. That is, DNA is a self-replicating system that through randomness was able to build more and more complex organisms over time. It generically represents a way to encode behaviors through time, a necessary subset of which include behaviors for self-replication and resource acquisition (mostly to satisfy the self-replication requirement). On a more complex level, human society is the organism, human language (including speech, writing, visual arts) is the DNA (a means to pass knowledge, behaviors, etc. through time), and humans are the "cells".
3 comments
Aardwolf 1407 days ago
Deterministic pseudorandom would also solve these cases, and is not true random.

I'm not saying these cases are pseudorandom (the logistics of having a prng with state apply to biology looks hard), but that it doesn't seem to require true random

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packetlost 1407 days ago
Correct! I think that's the question though. Is there true randomness in the system or is it really just playing out based on the laws of physics. I'm more inclined to believe the mechanisms at which randomness gets injected into DNA replication is pseudorandom, but for mental constructs I'm more inclined to believe it's sensitive enough to true randomness.
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ersinesen 1407 days ago
Buridan's ass:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass

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packetlost 1407 days ago
Oh hey, I didn't know there was a thing to explain that!
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walleeee 1407 days ago
Organicism can be a useful and fertile frame but it's not without its perils
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packetlost 1407 days ago
Hmm, I don't think what I'm saying is the same thing. I'm saying that the behavior of organisms amount to systems with the same function no matter the complexity or timescale. Though to that end, I do consider human society to be an organism of sorts, but beyond that not so much.
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