Artificial Intelligence and Human Randomness?

Question

I'm writing a paper on Artificial Intelligence. Basically my premise is this:

Computers are never random (at least as they exist now) - random number generators work off of random seeds, so if you know the seed that was put in then you can predict perfectly what the computer will do; also, with that seed, it will do the same thing every time.

My question is this: do humans work the same way? Does Human Randomness exist, or is our reaction to any stimulus predetermined? Basically, if you were carbon-copied into an identical situation with your identical life story in a different universe, would you behave identically the same? From your opinions on the world and reaction to world events all the way down to what typos you make and when you yawn?

Obviously this cannot be tested since it's impossible to recreate the same circumstances you've been in before since you learned from the first one. But I'm talking in theory.

I think human randomness exists; but I'm open to opinions.

What I'm looking for in this question are primarily articles by philosophers or other sources (preferably online, the paper's due 24 hours from now); but arguments from y'all work too.

Answer 1

A guy named Barry Satinover has a book out called "The Quantum Brain". He claims (rightly, I think) that the brain harnesses random quantum effects that normally cancel out at larger material scales. Look in to quantum physics, and into chaos or complexity, as these terms relate to physics.
I'm not sure though, that your hypothesis is stated in a useful way. Too many loopholes.

Answer 2

A strict determinist would say that 'randomness' is just the word for an unpercieved order.

You believe you understand exactly how your computer operates, but if this were so then it would never operate unpredictably in any way. Your computer would never crash, installations would never go awry, viruses would be unable to take hold on your system, and basically nothing bad would ever happen. But bad things DO happen to most computers. All the time.

The perfectly operating computer only does so when it is perfectly maintained and protected - an all-but-impossible means to your end. Normal computers wear and make mistakes, are influenced by radiation of neighboring devices, and in many cases by damaged fragments of programs that still linger in the system.

If you knew about every one of these influences, you could, of course, account for them and still have your perfectly predictable computer most of the time. The problem becomes an epistemological one - can you really know enough about the system to predict it? Computers are simpler than humans, so they seem a lot more predictable. But I would argue that when you get down to brass tacks, they aren't anywhere near as predictable as people think.

I see no reason to believe that a typical human is any less deterministic than a typical computer. Why should he be? Where would this supposed randomness come from? On the other hand, a typical human is FAR more complex and subject to FAR more influences than a typical computer, so the epistemological problem is a zillion times worse.

People who know each other for years and years may be able to predict each others' behaviour with fair accuracy, but it's still subject to what one person ate for breakfast, what the temperature is outside, or how long it's been since one has recieved a call from his uncle. In other words, there's a boat-load of APPARENT randomness.

And for practical purposes, the appearance of a thing is often close enough to the thing-in-itself to make the distinction between the two to be not worth considering. I suspect that will be the case for this scenario for a long, long time. If not forever.

Answer 3

This is basically a twist on determinism vs. free will.

What looks like free will may simply be a less than complete understanding of the system. What looks like chaos may simply be a less than perfect understanding of the system. What looks like quantum weirdness may simply be a less than complete understanding of the system.

Check out the Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics.

It basically says the universe and everything in it is deterministic. The problem is that to be able to see the order in the apparent chaos would require knowing the exact condition of every bit of matter and energy in the universe all at once. If it were possible to take that 'snapshot', everything from the past could be mapped out and everything in the future predicted.... perfectly. The 'snapshot is analogous to the 'seed' in the random number generator.

Then again, maybe chaos and quantum flux and free will are real. The Bohm interpretation is just an interesting way to look at the puzzle so I thought I'd throw it out there as a counter point to your opinion.

Answer 4

Nature itself is random at the quantum level, and because of that, it is also random on the largest scale over a very long period of time. It is not just humans or even just life that is random.

In your hypothesis, computers are never random; but over eons of time, computers will produce random results. Even over relatively short periods of time, computers will break down and sometimes fail to work properly, thus producing irreproducible (random) results.

In your paper contrasting posited human randomness with posited AI determinism, be sure to take the time factor into account. If the time frames in which the two hypothetical phenomena occur are not identical, the results of any thought experiment will be invalid. Good luck!

Answer 5

Life is the opposite of death. And for any life to exist, there must be a will to live and to avoid death. All people are born with a natural desire to live and to continue life through reproduction. And this is what makes human choices non-random.

Perhaps the choices available to people are random. But the way people choose cannot be random because such randomness is incompatible with life.

Sure, some people choose to commit suicide and harm themsevles in various ways. And perhaps in the short-term, human randomness does exist. But in the long term, random choices are incompatible with life and random behavior causes it's own extinction.

Perhaps the only exception where random human choices can continue indefinitely, is when these choices don't adversely affect people's chances of survival either in the short term or in the long term.

It's not so much a question of whether human randomness exists or doesn't exist. Human randomness does exist to some degree, just like it does in computers. But there are strict limits and constraints within which human randomness can exist, just as there are strict limits and constraints on randomness in computers. The only difference between randomness in people and in computers is in the kind of limitations on randomness they have. The limitations of people are different from those of computers.

Answer 6

There are countless varieties of randomness and we've all of them. generally there is randomness interior the experience that some issues can basically be defined or envisioned using the mathematics of randomness yet in fact the outcomes are inevitable. case in point, in tossing a handful of money the 2d they flow away the hand, the consequence is inevitable. even nonetheless, we've no thank you to assemble the special suggestions required to totally style the situation mathematically, or certainly the aptitude to simulate the special one time consequence whether we had the suggestions. yet another such equipment is the climate. issues we are able to understand, that are inevitable, which could be desperate, yet that are nevertheless presently unknown. the ten^one centesimal digit of pi is inevitably one particular digit yet its fee is largely random from our attitude. real randomness. The motives of obvious randomness are the two loss of suggestions or loss of a mathematical style. even nonetheless, it style of feels that throughout quantum mechanics the real international is largely quite random for no reason different than it rather is the way it rather is.