Death.. Then what?

[Lingus]

We are still kind of discussing that. The question itself leads into the current discussion. If you ask what comes after death and why, it kind of leads into whether there is a god or higher power or whether everything is random. Depending on the answer to that, there's either a heaven/hell kind of afterlife, or some kind of ethereal dimension of sorts, or nothing.

[ARTgames]

god or higher power or whether everything is random

I believe in neater as of now. I would post what i think but i what to do more research first.

[Lingus]

Huh. I'm interested in what would fall outside of those 3 things (really 2: Higher power or no higher power)

[ARTgames]

what would be the no higher power?

[Lingus]

It would be that there is no higher power in the universe. Everything is essentially random.

[ARTgames]

Im of the belief that every thing happens all of the time. That's an over simplified way of saying it, but i bet you have heard it before.

So may i ask you Lingus . how do we as of now test for randomness of a simple line of numbers ranging from 0-9?

[Lingus]

That's not a bad theory. It goes along with quantum mechanics. How particles can take every possible path. The conclusion is that there are infinite universes in which every possibility occurs.

I'm not sure about your question there. I don't really know the answer to how to test for randomness. I know that sometimes what looks random is actually just extremely complex. So yea... More on that later?

[krele]

Im of the belief that every thing happens all of the time. That's an over simplified way of saying it, but i bet you have heard it before.

So may i ask you Lingus . how do we as of now test for randomness of a simple line of numbers ranging from 0-9?

How do you mean test? The chance to get the desired number on your first try would be 1/10 or 10%... I'm pretty confused by the question...

[ARTgames]

Im of the belief that every thing happens all of the time. That's an over simplified way of saying it, but i bet you have heard it before.

So may i ask you Lingus . how do we as of now test for randomness of a simple line of numbers ranging from 0-9?

How do you mean test? The chance to get the desired number on your first try would be 1/10 or 10%... I'm pretty confused by the question...

If i gave you a line of numbers to something of a million digits long (3752010 ...ect) how would you test how random that is?

[Lingus]

I think I understand the question. I kind of touched on it above. Basically, if you have some series of numbers is it a random set of numbers or is there some pattern to it? Sometimes the pattern could be so complex that the numbers seem random, but there really is a pattern. The only thing you can prove in that case is that there is a pattern... you can never prove that there isn't. You can test it for complexity and if you fail to find a pattern up to a certain level of complexity you can theorize that it is random... but that's it.

That's how a lot of things work by the way. I imagine Art was trying to draw a parallel back to the earlier topic. About the randomness of the universe. Is it really random or is it so complex that no one can see the pattern? There definitely are patterns in the universe though. The interesting question is how these patterns came about? I personally don't feel that someone was guiding the universe to act this way. I think that there are just rules. The universe has a certain amount of order. It has something to do with entropy... That in certain systems order will arise (normally systems will tend towards chaos, unordered).

So that's my thoughts on the subject...

(PS. This is an awesome topic.)

[ARTgames]

yeah i agree with that post.

One way we test for true random in numbers from 0-9 is we would list out all the numbers and have a ratio of how common each number occur. The closer each occurrences of every number the more random the number is considered. Makes sent. A true random picking should not favor one number over another one. Its almost like if we gave random a unlimited amount of choices it would pick all of them but also pick non of them just as much. Im not sure what this provides to the topic. But it seems important.

[Lingus]

Not sure if that works Art. Think about it, if the list went like this:

012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789

Every number zero through nine would be in the list the same exact amount. But, there is a definite pattern. The selection of the numbers is not random at all. For a set of numbers to truely be random there should be no pattern whatsoever.

[Cactuscat222]

Not sure if that works Art. Think about it, if the list went like this:

012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789

Every number zero through nine would be in the list the same exact amount. But, there is a definite pattern. The selection of the numbers is not random at all. For a set of numbers to truely be random there should be no pattern whatsoever.

I wouldn't say the number couldn't have a pattern in order to be random. If you picked a random number between 1 and 999,999,999,999,999,999,999 and you chose 133,331,333,313,333,133,331 - it has a pattern in it, but its still random :P

[Jake]

This definitely reminds me of coding. Random numbers are never actually random, but are a seed determined by the constantly shifting internal clock of the computer.

[Lingus]

Not sure if that works Art. Think about it, if the list went like this:

012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789

Every number zero through nine would be in the list the same exact amount. But, there is a definite pattern. The selection of the numbers is not random at all. For a set of numbers to truely be random there should be no pattern whatsoever.

I wouldn't say the number couldn't have a pattern in order to be random. If you picked a random number between 1 and 999,999,999,999,999,999,999 and you chose 133,331,333,313,333,133,331 - it has a pattern in it, but its still random :P

No, we're talking about a series of single digit numbers. So randomly choose a number between 0-9, then choose another, and another, and so on. If the series is something like, 1212121212, it's not random. It has a pattern.