>>12783104“Explain what true randomness means then, if you think you understand it.”
I’ll do my best.
Randomness is not a property of a single observable, but rather of the process used to generate that observable. For example, in mathematics, we call a sequence “algorithmically random” if it is impossible to deduce the next number in a sequence given only information about the previous numbers in the sequence. More precisely, if you need fewer bits to describe a sequence than those used to write out that sequence in full, then the sequence is not truly random, whereas if the only way to communicate and describe the full sequence is by writing out every term within that sequence, then the sequence is truly random. If I wrote down 3,1,4,1,5,9 and asked you to guess the next number, you would most likely be able to tell that the next number is 2, because there is a way for describing this sequence which requires fewer bits to communicate than the sequence itself (that is, “pi”), so it’s not a random sequence. If I wrote down 67,86,16,99,25,4, youd be hard-pressed to find a simpler description than the list of the terms. Mathematically, it is truly random. Even this sequence, however, is not 100% random in the physical sense because it required me to type them in, and my cognitive biases led me to type in some numbers with more likelihood than others. True randomness in nature is a property of a sequence of observables the next observable of which cannot be predicted even in principle, but whose aggregate long term behavior can be predicted with great accuracy.
