- Jan 17, 2000
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I was over at the Foreknowledge, Fatalism, And Free Will thread and it reminded me of a question I was pondering. How do computers generate random numbers, and are they really random? I'm no math or computer genius by any means, but I've used the RAND function in QBasic
and I recently did an experiment in human memory testing digit span and used a random digit string generating program. Given that the study of science demands that events be deterministic and materialistic (that events have causes, and that these causes are natural and not from some supernatural phenomenon), it appears that you could find a way to explain every 'random' number that a computer generates. Any thoughts?