#rationality #epistemology #mathematic #computation # [[Epistemic status]] #shower-thought # Probability is an useful illusion #to-digest >Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, **there is no such thing as a random number-there are only methods to produce random numbers**, and a strict arithmetical procedure is of course not such a method. (It is true that a problem we suspect of being solvable by random methods may be solvable by some rigorously defined sequence, but this is a deeper mathematical question than we can go into now.) >~ [[Von Neumann]] [[Probability]] does not exist in [[Objective reality]] according to the [[The multiverse|many worlds interpretation]], everything happens given everything that happened before, and all possibilities happen, including [[Counterfactual]]s. But at our ant-[[Philosophy/Rationality/Intelligence|organic intelligence]]-scale, probability is an useful [[Heuristics|heuristic]] because we have limited computations. # External links