The problem modern computers have with randomness is that it doesn’t make mathematical sense. You can’t program a computer to produce true randomness—wherein no element has any consistent, rule-based relationship to any other element—because then it wouldn’t be random. There would always be some underlying structure to the randomness, some mathematics of its generation, which would allow you to reverse-engineer and re-create it. Ergo: not random.
No, there are true random sources in a computer. Any outside input can be used to generate randomness. Mostly user input, but temperature fluctuations can work as well, if the sensor precision is high enough.
Also the argument is only correct on a technical level for PRNGs. Choose a 65535 sided dice and make the instructions a thousand steps long and you’ll have a pretty hard time to deduce the instructions from the generated numbers. Not to mention how long the list of numbers needs to be for the attacker to start guessing.
This is an irrelevant distinction for any case where you aren’t worried about someone reverse engineering the algorithm and seed by logging output. Any half decent PRNG’s output will be statistically indistinguishable from true randomness.
It’s not just about not wanting random, but randomness is actually very hard to create. Every random number is actual pseudo random
Some basic breakdowns of this concept:
https://slate.com/technology/2022/06/bridle-ways-of-being-excerpt-computer-randomness.html
Kid friendly version:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/633085
No, there are true random sources in a computer. Any outside input can be used to generate randomness. Mostly user input, but temperature fluctuations can work as well, if the sensor precision is high enough.
Also the argument is only correct on a technical level for PRNGs. Choose a 65535 sided dice and make the instructions a thousand steps long and you’ll have a pretty hard time to deduce the instructions from the generated numbers. Not to mention how long the list of numbers needs to be for the attacker to start guessing.
For the purpose of shuffling a playlist pseudo random is indistinguishable from truly random in all the ways that matter anyway.
This is an irrelevant distinction for any case where you aren’t worried about someone reverse engineering the algorithm and seed by logging output. Any half decent PRNG’s output will be statistically indistinguishable from true randomness.