Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by 303uru 926 days ago
Well, funnily enough rand() isn’t all that random, but that’s beyond the point. I don’t think randomness is a good argument for free will, that’s just nature. Does a flipping coin have free will? An electron before it decoheres?
1 comments

Well, randomness is definitely novel output though.

PRNGs are not-quite-random, they're actually chaotic functions.

Which is actually a bit closer to how I think free will functions if you look at it empirically from the outside. (At least: if you were to use your <free will> to try to generate 'random' numbers; which will also not be perfectly random!)

Of course, it does sort of depend on your definition of <free will>.

Oh shoot, I see why I made the error, but on checking more sources to back me up, it turns out only some PRNGs are considered chaotic, and the most used ones are not necessarily viewed with that lens in literature. Eh, it would have been easier. In future I'll have to switch to a different set of algorithms to make my argument,.