{"id":1786,"date":"2014-04-22T15:07:32","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T19:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=1786"},"modified":"2016-12-10T04:52:43","modified_gmt":"2016-12-10T09:52:43","slug":"the-quest-for-randomness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=1786","title":{"rendered":"The Quest for Randomness"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, I’ve written an article of that title<\/a> for the wonderful American Scientist<\/em> magazine—or rather, Part I of such an article. \u00a0This part explains the basics of Kolmogorov complexity and algorithmic information theory: how, under reasonable assumptions, these ideas\u00a0can be used in principle to “certify” that a string of numbers\u00a0was really\u00a0produced randomly—something that one might’ve imagined\u00a0impossible a priori<\/em>. \u00a0Unfortunately, the article also explains why this fact is of limited use in practice: because Kolmogorov complexity is uncomputable! \u00a0Readers who already know this material won’t find much that’s new here, but I hope those who don’t will enjoy the piece.<\/p>\n

Part II, to appear in the next issue, will be all about quantum entanglement and Bell’s Theorem, and their\u00a0very recent use in striking\u00a0protocols for generating so-called “Einstein-certified random numbers”—something of much more immediate\u00a0practical interest.<\/p>\n

Thanks so much to Fenella Saunders of American Scientist<\/em> for commissioning these articles, and my apologies to her and any interested readers\u00a0for the 4.5\u00a0years (!) it took me to get off my rear end (or rather, onto it)\u00a0to\u00a0write these things.<\/p>\n

\n

Update (4\/28):<\/span><\/b> Kate Becker of NOVA has published an article<\/a> about “whether information is fundamental to reality,” which includes some quotes from me. Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, I’ve written an article of that title for the wonderful American Scientist magazine—or rather, Part I of such an article. \u00a0This part explains the basics of Kolmogorov complexity and algorithmic information theory: how, under reasonable assumptions, these ideas\u00a0can be used in principle to “certify” that a string of numbers\u00a0was really\u00a0produced randomly—something that one might’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-complexity"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1786"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1789,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions\/1789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}