Establish Random

Think of a number between 1 and 100. Now, moreso than the number itself, consider the process that you underwent to generate it. This number was not random, you generated it deterministically. This is to say that the query slipped into your mind and was answered using a veiled set of tools designed to approximate random, from your perspective. I imagine that people choosing 1 or 100 in this scenario might feel cheeky, considering a "random, not random" scenario. To further illustrate this point, what if I said a number between 1 and 1,000,000? I feel as though the brain reframes this as generating 6 digits, and is more likely to pick a number with six non-repeating digits than any other option, weighted. If the number were between 1 and 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 I imagine that patterns would be found that are even less random, and it would be found that whole sections of the field are left untouched, due to the way that the human brain processes such requests, and the increasing difficulty of presenting randomly while acting deterministically within such a large field.

Even when the mind "wanders," it does not do so randomly. For example, while you might find yourself thinking about the street that you grew up on every so often, and possibly wonder why, you will not find yourself thinking about the street that your neighbor grew up on, except in rare/prompted circumstances (you happened to grow up together, you know your neighbor very well so have context for this street, this post makes you wonder about it, etc.). Even at our most random- a wandering mind- the dependence upon familiarity and prompting within our thought process is glaringly apparent, if examined even slightly. Logic dictates that there is no limit to this limitation within the processor; the underlying mechanisms, no matter how small or fundamental, have no logical reason to not be deterministic, though this flies in the face of experience. This is to say that you might think of your hometown street, your highschool, your first memory of your mother, etc., but not of things outside of the information available to you. If prompted to generate a random number, your brain might use any one of these informational nodes in unexpected ways, like some video games use a seed to mimic randomness, but it cannot use information that it does not possess. In the same way, non-random actions have been taken, using the same brain, and the same set of prior experiences, back until the earliest possible moment (birth, memory formation, brain formation, conception, etc.). Does knowing that a processor exists without understanding how it processes give logical grounds to saying that it processes non-deterministically, by magic, at random? Is not the closest we can come to accurately describing why life does not feel entirely deterministic is that there is too much that we experience and cannot directly calculate, and that we do not know how the brain and mind work?

I find it interesting to look at Graham's Number for a further analogy here. G1 is the smallest defined part of Graham's Number, which then continues up to G64. There are staggeringly many more numbers in G2 than G1, yet every single random number ever generated (with any specificity- excluding things like saying "G3," for example) has been less than G1. This is because the human brain cannot presently generate/store/recite numbers greater than G1, or really anywhere close. We cannot even conceivably create a computer within our universe to calculate G2. That being said, given the vastness of numbers potentially available when asking for a random number without bounds or with incalculably huge finite bounds (1 to infinity, or 1 to G64), the entire field of human responses would be somewhat analogous to creating a computer program to generate a random number between 1-100 and having it return the value of 1 every time. It is not that the program is not trying to generate the number randomly, perhaps it even thinks that it has done so successfully, it is just that it has no way to comprehend numbers above 1, in this scaled down analogous field. Would you depend on this system for generating truly random numbers?

This reminds me of the Doctor Who episode Veritas. In this episode, The Doctor discovers that he is in a simulation because there is a document that can prove to the reader that they are not generating numbers randomly, but reveals that the process is deterministic when attempting to generate these numbers. It took some time, but I now believe that the point of the episode, and the reason that The Doctor seemed fairly unphased by this revelation, is because this was not actually news to him, as much as possibly a reframing or exposure of a familiar process that was already in place and veiled, that of deterministic thought. If one can prove to themselves, rather quickly, that what they think cannot be random in the way that it is commonly assumed to be, the natural next question is regarding what that underlying program is, and how it is directed. We have the tools to understand the determined nature of our thoughts and actions, but fortunately life is not as "in your face" about it as finding a book that contains the precise numbers that you just wrote down. The underlying question is: do we have the seed for true random somewhere within us, signaling from within the sea of what is known, every time we choose, are inspired, dream, etc.?

This problem does not disappear as processing power increases, but perhaps the veil grows thicker. The establishment of truly random does not feel like a matter of increasing scope, but rather of balancing the scales used to process, not entirely unlike how a quantum computer generates results by collapsing possibilities. It is not that we need a reliable way to generate a number between 1 and infinity, it is as basic as needing a binary system, say the numbers 1 and 2, where each number is equally likely in advance, but any attempts to guess or otherwise know the result in advance is equally likely to be correct or incorrect. I'm guessing that even current computers could analyze a flipping motion, coin, and landing surface to guess the result of a coin flip before the coin lands (at present, if carefully constructed), so the system must extend beyond the bounds of our physical universe. Quantum mechanics seems to provide a clue for how this is done. While I am not personally convinced that its experiments provides truly random results as they seem, it may be that the field in which the results are determined is intrinsically out of the reach/observation of our own human processing, and therefore the results are like random to us; the human brain can still only operate with the information that it has access to, after all, which includes the external limitations of reality.

Trying to picture this interaction between the human brain and the hypothetically deterministic factors that produce results within quantum mechanics would be like observing the sphere of influence between entities, each moving at the speed of light in all directions within the surface universe, but having no momentum in the direction of where quantum mechanics stores its random variables. That being said, if advancement can continue, perhaps the sphere of influence moves toward this quantum knowledge, but does so at the speed of knowledge instead of light, which is presumably slower. This would suggest that we will lose our ability to conceive of random, however, when we reach the beach that is the veil of quantum mechanics. If random becomes a fairy tale, like telling kids about Santa, what will experience become?

I just considered a mechanism that could possibly provide random amidst omniscience, though it feels flawed/incomplete. The issue would be: is omniscience entirely thorough in every moment? Let's say one polls the entire population regarding their prediction for a coin flip, and can do so as if querying a computer system, and nearly instantaneously. At the same time, a physical measurement is taken somewhere, of something (the buoy motion, up or down, at a particular time, for example). Presumably the people will not know the buoy motion, and the system measuring the buoy has no knowledge of the people's choice. With omniscience, however, each input could be known, but might not be simultaneously measured. The popularity in the flip is determined by the poll, and the buoy determines if popular or unpopular is the result. Additional layers might be added (ie. having many buoys, with something about the geographical distribution of the poll results determining which will be used), but the end goal is to establish an answer that cannot be determined in advance, even with omniscience. Perhaps system frustration is not the perfect methodology here, but it stands to reason that something is the answer, or we are exclusively elements in a clockwork mechanism, with every tick leading us closer to realizing how tightly bound we are, or our own annihilation. Perhaps it comes down to choice, to agreement after all, not to look past the veil of the other, so that the "random" of the other/others remains obscured. This would work except in the case of compulsive omniscience, which is possibly the case.