[Alamo-Girl]

Oops, I forgot to give an example.

If one were to extract a series of numbers of the extension of pi, it would appear to be "random" when it is fact highly determined.

By knowing what the system "is" - the extension of pi - one also knows the extracted series of numbers is not "random" at all.

A "random" event in nature is like that. We don't know what the system "is." What we really mean is that part we are observing is "unpredictable."

[TXnMA]

Milady, methinks ye be flexing your ego and gagging on semantics.

As far as we are able to measure, the behavior of the molecules in a volume of gas is predictably "random with a uniform distribution."

I submit that our God's use of such processes in His Creation was a brilliant way of establishing repeatable, self-controlling equilibria. You may not find the trustworthiness of the behavior of our atmosphere (despite the random motion of its individual molecules) to be worthy of admiration of Him who created it that way -- but I do.

[RightWhale]

A "random" event in nature is like that. We don't know what the system "is." What we really mean is that part we are observing is "unpredictable."

In science, chemistry for example, a random sample would be exactly like the next random sample, all the same and predictable to any degree you care to measure.

[bezelbub]

If one were to extract a series of numbers of the extension of pi, it would appear to be "random" when it is fact highly determined.
By knowing what the system "is" - the extension of pi - one also knows the extracted series of numbers is not "random" at all.

And it would be a wonderful random number generator, but, alas, the numbers are to complicated to calculate. So, we look at even simpler methods to generate things which feel random...