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Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
221–230 of 240 posts
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#222[deleted]
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#223I failed to exercise free will in this case.
Free will is in play as and to the extent that my future is determined by my decisions, rather than by other factors beyond my control. For example, if I'm walking down the street, I have free will in the matter of whether I go North or South, but not in the matter of whether I go up or down.
I tried typing some letters because I was curious to see what the output would be. But for some reason, the page didn't work on my browser; no output was produced. Thus, my attempt to exercise free will was foiled.
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#224I'm at 54%, does that mean I can get a job at google as a PRNG?
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans are bad at random number generation, until you train them to do it. Randomness is a skill that can be learned like any other.
Do you have any resources on how to become better at randomness?
I don't, but if you are curious I know Allen Neuringer studied training random behavior in animals and humans via reinforcement.
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#226When I was little (and had too much free time) I memorized many digits of some transcendental numbers. The only (semi)practical use I've found for that knowledge, is that I can use it as a reasonably good pseudorandom stream. If for some reason I have to choose things pseudorandomly. Pick an arbitrary starting point in pi, and press 'd' for even digits and 'f' for odd digits, I get around 0.49 accuracy with this orac…
Haha, I did the same thing! From memory: 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197969399375105 Now, the interesting question, how accurate is my recollection after all these years? Ack, one digit off!
141592653589793238462643383279502884197969399375105... that 9 should be a 1, right?
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#227When I was little (and had too much free time) I memorized many digits of some transcendental numbers. The only (semi)practical use I've found for that knowledge, is that I can use it as a reasonably good pseudorandom stream. If for some reason I have to choose things pseudorandomly. Pick an arbitrary starting point in pi, and press 'd' for even digits and 'f' for odd digits, I get around 0.49 accuracy with this orac…
Well, that only shows that this oracle can be improved. It should be able to recognize that pattern from a well known transcendental number.
That might be a slippery slope though. Is a known random sequence less random than an original one? Should a randomness detector keep a database of all random sequence ever produced to give lower scores to known ones?
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#228It says "My last guesses (most recent at bottom):"
But the most recent guess is at the top.
Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#229Re: Test your “free will” at the Aaronson Oracle
#230Got it to 0.5991561181434598 after a while (totally random would be "0.5"). Not sure how "free will" comes into play, if there was indeed free will, I could have freely decided to only press one, and the Oracle would have had close to 100% certainty. Rather, what it measures is randomness or predictability, which is not the same thing as free will (especially "after the fact", e.g. after the choice is made).
I got mine to hover around 58%. I was watching which sequences it was predicting and then changing them. That seems to mostly work.