Can a random number generator predict the future?

[headova1]

It's like passing over a magnifying glass over a text in a book, you wouldn't neccessarily use a magnifying glass the size of a book.

your point is a very good one however.

 

[HallsofIvy]

The PEAR research does make 'predictions'. (For example they tell a person to try and make the RNG produce more 0's.)

That's not a prediction (it's not even a 'prediction').

Also i believe that in the Global Consciousness Research, they did make some predictions. For instance they knew that the OJ simpson trial would be on TV and then 'predicted' that there would be a deviation from randomness.

But was there? And that's a prediction about the RPG not one based on its results, which was what the question was about.

However, you probably can't make predictions like 'because the randomness is disturbed, a meteor will hit New York tomorrow'.

 

[DaveC426913]

I doubt anyone will understand this! However if you do and have the computing knowledge to make it happen or are at a University or part of the government and are interested in seeing the past or the future or seeing into the universe,

You don't need computing knowledge. ANY random noise will achieve the exact same thing. Throw a handful of sand on the floor enough times and some of those times it will fall in the image of a set of lottery numbers. Then again, you're no closer to knowing if those numbers will win...

You are misunderstanding statistical probability.

 

[headova1]

Unless one finds patterns which correlate exactly with a recording of the present the more patterns the more accurate it shall be. A set of numbers are the right ones a programme could easily pick the most likely.

 

[mheslep]

I had a similar idea as a child: generate all short strings of text, attempting to interpret them as proofs. If it's not a proof, discard it; if it is, then it's automatically trustworthy.

The problem is that I had no grasp of how many short strings there were, let alone how many moving images. A 100 x 100 pixel display (very, very poor...) at 16 colors showing a 1 minute clip (at 10 fps, also poor) has 100 x 100 x 60 x 10 = 6,000,000 pixels in total. Cycling through each possibility (1 minute for each, naturally) would take 2^6000000 minutes.

The galaxy should decay into Hawking radiation or a photon/lepton soup in around 2^350 minutes, so as long as your program runs for at least 2^5999650 times longer than the galaxy, you should see the coronation as desired.

But even if you're that patient, how will you know which coronation is real and which many are clever 'forgeries'?...

uh oh, careful with that one. Ever read AC Clark's "The Nine Billion Names of God"? I am not ready for the end of the universe quite yet, got plans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God