Are people capable of generating a random number?

Question

Let's say you tell me to produce randomly a number from 1-100, and I choose the number 47. Can it be said that there is a specific reason I chose the number 47, and that it is not completely random? By random I mean that there is absolutely no reason this number in particular was chosen.

It seems odd to me, since it seems like since I have applied conscious effort to produce or choose a number within that range, or even without range, that it can't be truly random, but there might be a reason why I chose that number amongst the many others I could have chosen.

I guess the general question, which I'm interested to know if any philosophers in the past have discussed, is whether our thoughts are necessarily based on prior thoughts, or if thoughts can be truly spontaneous and random?

Answer 1

Yes, many philosophers have discussed the question of free will vs determinism. Too many to mention here, in fact.

The notion of "randomness" (and the associated concepts of "choice" and "chance") are suprisingly difficult to pin down.

Jacques Derrida has a fascinating essay on the subject ("My Chances/Mes Chances"), but judging from the manner your question is posed, I imagine you are too unfamiliar with the underlying literature to glean much from it; I suggest instead you turn to some encyclopedias of philosophy to do some preliminary research on the subject.

Answer 2

Ok - let's say I tell you a number between 1 and 100 inclusively, which is random - how could you prove it?

Of course, if I say 1, 100, 99, 42 or 13, most people will claim it wasn't random, because their first thoughts where about the same numbers, but if these numbers where excluded, then it wouldn't be a fair draw from 100 numbers, but from 95.

So from a single number, you can't distinguish a biased number from a random number. I can tell you a number, and you can't prove it isn't random, but you can't prove it is as well.

So I could tell you my technique, how to generate the number, and convince you. If most people could learn the technique, and you coulnd't tell before, what number the people are producing, and more: if the repeated usage of the technique would lead to an uniformly distribution over the numbers from 1 to 100, we would call this a 'Yes, we can'.

Ok. So I take a sheet of paper, write the numbers 1 to 100 on small pieces of it, put them in a bag, and pull a number - mission accomplished! :)

That is cheating!

Is it? Ok - we then need to see how to sharpen the rules, I guess? No tools allowed, like paper and bag, RNG and dices?

Ok - I pull a lot of hairs out of my head - much more than 100, let's say 500 to 1000 hairs, and then I count them, and take the modulo. :)

That is cheating!

Is it really? Well, of course the technique doesn't scale. It can't be repeated very often; not often enough to check, whether an equal distribution is reached. And you could tell, that the rules prohibit any material as tool.

Ok. Then I'm nearly to the end of my wisdom. For a random result, I need some unpredictable input, and of course, my brain isn't a good source for such an input. I could name a measurement, which would work for a small amount of small random numbers (1-10), and it works similar to the hair example:

I think about a song I know, and the first song which comes to my mind, I count the characters. I can't predict from the first song - "I am the walrus" how many characters it has. The number is pretty big, compared to the number range (1-10), and I take the modulo, and have a random result.

So this is a proof of concept, and the next time, I would, of course, have to choose a different song, and so the number of experiments is limited to the number of songs or poems I know, and it is a time consuming procedure.

If the rules say 'name a number spontaneusly - in 2 seconds', I'm pretty sure nobody can produce repeatedly random numbers. But given enough time, you can.

Answer 3

Empirically, humans can't choose truly random numbers.

If our thoughts aren't based on our prior thoughts, what are they based on? If you don't have something to build off of it seems like you don't have anything.

Answer 4

I think that this question has been answered to some degree outside of philosophy. There are several mathematical studies that have demonstrated that when humans are asked to provide strings of random numbers, they turn out not to be random at all, and that similar patterns may be found within the strings. The philisphical question is of course, are the patterns real? There is an occurrence of the same integer, and adjacent integers, and integers within specific sets of 10 from one ending in zero to the next,(10-20, 20-30,etc.) that greatly exceeds statistical probability of the occurrence. If given a choice from 1 to very large numbers, say a trillion, the strings are skewed toward lower numbers.

Answer 5

Douglas Hofstadter has something to say about randomness in his book Godel, Escher, Bach. In chapter 19 he explores the complexities of mathematics and meaning as they could apply to Artificial Machine Intelligence. Its a daunting subject, and Hofstadter chooses to understand human intelligence as having the 'right stuff' to randomize. I should add he does not detail a specific human capacity for randomization. He recaps his thoughts on creativity itself within the general frame where machine and human processes, might, possibly intersect.

"It is common notion that randomness is an indispensable ingredient of creative acts. [...] This world is a giant heap of randomness; when you mirror some of it inside your head, your head's interior absorbs a little of that randomness. The triggering patterns of symbols, therefore, can lead you down the most random-seeming paths, simply because they came from your interactions with a crazy, random world. So it can be with a computer program, too. Randomness is an intrinsic feature of thought, not something which has to be 'artificially inseminated' whether through dice, decaying nuclei, random number tables, or what-have-you. It is an insult to human creativity to imply that it relies on such arbitrary sources." (p.673)

Answer 6

See, I believe that there is quite a confusion between 'randomness' and 'unpredictability'. Unpredictability is when WE can't pin down the outcome. We humans don't know everything so we aren't able to pin out the reason for the generation of that particular number, and the number, but, it(the reason) still exists.

Let's assume that there is a consciousness called 'Reality'. It knows everything and can analyze everything. This Reality has a brain. So, this Reality can pre-calculate every human action, or the string of random number(s) based on their experiences in this case. One can't permanently delete his experiences. Even if he/she is an amnesiac, they remain in the subconscious part of our brain, and based on his/her experiences we do everything. Also, forgotten means irretrievable. It's there, but you can't recollect it. It doesn't mean permanently erased.

Random is something that our friend Reality cannot pre-calculate. It has no roots, no origins, no subconscious reasons. It just is there. Nothing can generate random numbers. There always has to be something, or some reason to everything. Even computer random generation algorithms have a seed, i.e., the number starting from which the random generation algorithm is executed.

So, humans are incapable of producing a random number. We can make a unpredictable number, because our algorithms are unique and highly complex, but not a random one.

Source(s): Intellectual combat

Answer 7

the answer is yes.

people are capable of generating random numbers.

it doesn't mean we're always acting in unpredictable ways. much to the opposite: the more conscious we are of our actions, the more predictable they are.

even if we could ever precisely pin out the reason why we choose a particular single number, that's not to say it wasn't random. reality can be both deterministic and completely unpredictable to every practical sense for the whole existence of life in it.

anyone can think of a completely unpredictable number for any practical purpose, specially if it's unconscious. our language tend to inflict a lot of bias in anything we do. but let's leave the discussion about randomness and free-will aside.

think of it this way...

despite what's shown in the movies, some amnesia cases turn people unable to remember anything, while maintaining the brain working seamlessly fine, having new thoughts normally, unrelated to previous thoughts.

those thoughts from a brain with amnesia couldn't be related to previous thoughts, since they simply don't exist. they are forgotten!

the hardest part between generating a random thought or action and making it into a number is actually verbalising it.

the best and most secure ways to generate entropy for random numbers in a computer will always use what we call noise. and it could be as simple as moving a mouse, typing the keyboard, or vocalising any sound.

the number a deterministic computer can generate with our human entropy is provably as real as any other seed that can be used to generate what we still call today real randomness.

Answer 8

I appreciate the well thought out answers, but I think this topic could benefit from some objective statistical analysis, e.g. one subjects responses to several random number queries plotted over time, a large group's individual responses ranked by volume of occurrence of each number in the range, etc.. Would we see that most answers are bunched up in the middle or in the upper half of the range? Would we see that very few people pick numbers at the extreme top and bottom of the range? In essence, can we make "random" human response more predictable, and what do the observed patterns say about human nature?

Answer 9

I don't believe a single person could generate a truly random number, but two people can (with the same premise that a person will randomly win, draw, or lose when playing Rock, Paper, Scissors).

1. Between you and your friend, establish who will be "initial", who will be "final" (must pick different ones); e.g. Adam is initial, Bill is final.

2. Establish the integer range; e.g. -5 to 18.

3. After a synchronized count down, both people simultaneously call out a number within the range; e.g. Adam: "-2", Bill: "9".

4. Take the positive difference of the two numbers; e.g. |-2 - 9| = 11.

5. If initial <= final, then add the difference to the minimum; e.g. -5 + 11 = 6 (6 is your randomly generated number).

6. If initial > final, then take the positive difference, subtract it from the maximum, then add 1; e.g. initial = 15, final = 8, |15 - 8| = 7, 18 - 7 = 11, 11 + 1 = 12 (12 is your randomly generated number).

Step 6 makes sense if you imagine that you may only count up, and that the number immediately after the maximum is the minimum; e.g. 16, 17, 18, -5, -4, -3 (that is where the extra 1 comes from).

Flaws: Just like in Rock, Paper, Scissors, players don't pick all choices with equal tendency; people use this knowledge to their advantage by anticipating what the other person may pick; e.g. Adam tends to pick odd numbers more often than even numbers, Bill knows this and wants an even number, therefore Bill would pick a low odd number, or a high even number.

Answer 10

Thanks for this great question :)

I think something else should be defined also. It may be possible for some minds to produce such number without any effort on the conscious side. But I think that our sub-cons will effect the number produced.

Also, our sub-cons is effected by everything environmental + our own cons., therefore "us", producing a "fully random" number is impossible.

A simple example, let's ask 100 people to give us a random number, and we simply do not give any ranges. I think most of the people will give us "small" numbers, like between 1-1000, because we use little numbers in our daily life most of the time :)

We sometimes forget that our cons. is also effected by our sub-cons. and it is very hard to be objective at all times.

Answer 11

Random is by definition the lack of predictability. So if it is possible to predict an event, it cannot be random.

The inverse question would then be: Are there some things that man cannot predict? Answering that question would indirectly answer your question as well.

So is a dice roll random? Well, lets see:

Lets assume that you have the equipment to measure the exact starting conditions. Assume also that you have a supercomputer that can simulate the dice bouncing around on the table. Would the dice roll be random? It would seem, no, because the dice result can be calculated from its starting conditions.

But lets question the assumption. Due to Heisenbergs uncertainty principle, it is impossible to measure the exact starting conditions (the starting conditions are affected by the very act of measuring them. The more accurate you try to measure, the greater you affect the very accuracy you are trying to achieve). And if the system you're going to simulate is chaotic (versus linear) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory, then any error in measuring will cause deviations in the simulation that grows exponentially in magnitude, causing very different results. Since even the most accurate measurement technology wouldn't be able to account for this exponential deviation growth and inability to measure extreme accuracy, you could say that it actually is possible to generate randomness.

But lets question that result even more. The randomness is based on the fact that there is a limit to how far into the future we can predict about a given chaotic system (the limit depending on how chaotic the system is). So that means that if we only try to predict within the timelimit, we can actually make moderate predictions about the result. Once we move beyond the limit, our predictions will be so off course that they become unusable.

Ok, so where are we now? In order to generate an unpredictable event, we need a system with the following properties:

1. The system has to be chaotic.
2. The system has to be very sensitive. That is, it must have a very early "prediction threshold" beyond which it quickly degrades into very chaotic and unpredictable behaviour (otherwise we would have to wait too long before the results could be considered random).

Radioactive decay is such a system (the stuff we measure in a Geiger Counter). We are simply unable to make predictions about when radioactive particles decay because its impossible to detect the starting conditions and accurately simulate the system (due to Quantum theory, Heisenberg Uncertainty principle etc). All we can see is that it happens with no visible pattern. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion is also such a system.

In theory, if we had a magic instrument that could measure the starting conditions and then simulate the radioactive decay with 100% accuracy, it would only be as predictable as an random-number-generating algorithm for which you already knew the seed (the seed is a number that is essentially the starting condition for the algorithm).

But who knows. Maybe such a magic device exists, and we have yet to find it.

Answer 12

I'm reposting this, almost verbatim, from here:

To answer your question, or at least get at some sort of picture, let's consider the following. What is random? Hmmm. Without getting into the details of the matter, or philosophical implications, we may define "random" in a very intuitive manner as this will mostly do for a discussion of this scope. Let us then propose that an event which is "completely" random is one for which it is logically (or formally, i.e. in the sense of mathematical rigor) impossible to associate any rule, pattern, or reason¹. This is, of course, where it all gets tricky.

In the way "random" has now been defined, it may be possible to generate an event, at least cognitively, which would be viewable as truly random. To take your example a bit furhter, let us conduct a thought experiment. Imagine we're walking down a busy city street. We decide to ask every person that passes by, and decides to stop and give us five seconds of their time, to pick a number. By this, we may construct two sets. Let set X denote the numbers we record, in the order we encountered them; and let Y denote the set of indicies of the people who stopped and gave us a number. So, for example, if the third, seventh, and twelfth person we asked stopped and gave us a number, Y = {3, 7, 12}. Certainly, the sets X and Y may not be random in the sense that we have defined.

But, then we may ask the question why the sets have the particular pattern or rule associated with it. Could there not have been different sets? And so, by our criterion for true randomness, the reason the sets X and Y are what they are, is random. I can't come up with the proof for the criterion off-hand, but I suspect Goedl's theorem's in there somewhere.

It is worth noting that by our definition, it may be the case that no event which occurs in nature could be viewed as random. So, that may answer your question about people being able to generate random numbers. On the other hand, we may very easily have events that qualify as truly random as long as they exist in some "virtual" reality as the one discussed in the example above. But, it's truly an understatement when I say that that's a topic best left to be discussed another time.

---

¹ At this point the concept of reason becomes very important. It would do us well to consider exactly what may be viewed as reason, the concept of of cause and effect, etc. However, for the discussion, we shall rely on a mostly intuitive notion of reason, and leave the detailed discussion of the matter to more able hands.

Answer 13

We cannot choose random numbers. Our actions are a result of other actions, which are a result of other actions. The trouble is that the whole system (our world) is so complex that it is impossible, in practice, to predict its behavior accurately enough and, thus, free will seems to exist (the striking thing is that actions we take now were conceived 4 seconds earlier). For further examples, you may want to refer to the works by Sam Harris (or even Marvin Minsky and many others).

Answer 14

I've been thinking about this problem as well. Human randomness has been shown to be exploted. For example, the TV show Brain Games has exploting what you think is "random" many times. They use ques, science, math, or somthing along thses lines, to know what you'll choose ( along with everyone else ) before you even choose it. This idea is frankly scary. With the rise of computer learning, what if computers get better at predicting your moves. If I, a hacker, wanted your information, I could create a nerual network, so slowly learn what "random" outputs you produce, by watching online content, seeing what you type and do, seeing how you think, and adventually being able to predict what you consider "random" to the point where I could use this software to guess your pins, and maybe even passwords.

Answer 15

Can it be said that there is a specific reason I chose the number 47, and that it is not completely random? By random I mean that there is absolutely no reason this number in particular was chosen.

Yes. In fact, there are always reasons for everything. You might be the reason.

I will choose the words random and arbitrary as pertinent to your question. There exists a subtle but important distinction between the two. According to Google word origin, the word arbitrary means

Middle English (in the sense ‘dependent on one's will or pleasure, discretionary’): from Latin arbitrarius, from arbiter ‘judge, supreme ruler’

While random means

Middle English (in the sense ‘impetuous headlong rush’): from Old French randon ‘great speed,’ from randir ‘gallop’

(Emphasis added).

What we perceive as randomness is nothing more or less than either a deterministic or arbitrary action (or a combination of the two) that occurs too rapidly for us to trace its true causes. (Pseudo-random number generators operate on this principle. Given an exponential but finite amount of time, a human being could always reverse engineer the compact logic generating a pseudo-random sequence.) Other answers here also have given reference to a chaos factor, or the speed at which supposedly random samples are produced or judged plausibly as "random". All things have causes, and therefore randomness in the sense of having no cause (which I assume is synonymous with your usage here of the word reason) does not exist.

Our choices can be built on a mix of prior experience, reason, and our own volition, potentially making them seem random to someone who is not acquainted with our experiences, our reasons, or our tendencies of choice. The element of choice is what makes it possible for our actions defy external explanation entirely, which is often conflated with being "random" in the sense of being causeless. However, the lack of a finite or brief communicable reason does not imply causelessness: the cause, rather than being a set of purely deterministic laws, is one's own volition.

Given this model, there is no such provable thing as true randomness (causeless and unexplainable action or variation).

Answer 16

My $0.10 of wisdom is this: if you try to apply philosophy to the question, you'll end up with either a physics conundrum whose empirical testability is provably indeterminable, or you will begin doubting in the soundness of the foundations of mathematics and/or mathematics' suitability to model anything other than perhaps itself. On the other hand, my personal experience with life points to man's freedom to choose good or evil (that's what I'd call the axiom of choice :).

Have you, in a painfully related vein, ever heard of this tragic Guinness Book record: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Sullivan. I must admit that this particular instance of a sequence of "random" events has a distinctly more gruesome dimension than my flipping 10 tails followed by 10 heads just 3 days after I had attempted to define mathematically an ideal "fair coin" while pondering some "baby probability" problems. You can deduce what my definition was (50/50 every time). OK, granted, this sequence was a subsequence of slightly longer string of flips, however, even so, the "probability" of getting that event was theoretically less than 1 in 300,000. Even Roy's wife was hit by a thunderbolt. The man survived 7 lightning strikes only to commit a suicide. I mean, is this a random act of nature? 7 random acts of nature?