I don’t understand how an algorithm can be truly random
In: Technology
There’s no actual ELI5 in here, so I’m going to give it a try.
They don’t, not really, but they do pretend. They have a lot of different ways to pretend, and a lot of them pretend a little different fron each other.
One of them might pretend like you’re throwing a bunch of numbers in a hat, and picking numbers out before putting them back. Sometimes they even write the picks down in order and hide the picks from you until you need a number. Then they go down the list when you ask for a number.
Another one might be waiting for you to tell it to give you a number. It doesn’t have one, so it has to make some up. Maybe it looks at the time on the screen for a clue. Maybe it sees that there are some things on the screen, so it uses that instead. But it doesn’t want you to know it’s just looking at stuff, so maybe it adds or subtracts based on what time it is. “I have ten things on the screen, and it’s six at night, so I’ll take six out of ten and get four. But he might figure that out, so I’ll add one back and get five. I’m so smart.”
Some might have a cup of dice always shaking, or a spinning wheel always turning, and it drops them when you ask for a number. The people who make these computers want it to feel like you’re really getting numbers because of luck, so they work hard to hide that it can’t just make a number up. They’re really, really good at pretending now.
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