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Comment by chopin | Hacker News Reader

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chopin·

If superdeterminism is true your PRNG isn't random.

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PRNG by definition is not random.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator

"A pseudorandom number generator (PRNG), also known as a deterministic random bit generator (DRBG)..."

I was referring to the seed.

This always seemed like the easiest way to explain superdeterminism. It's a universe where the laws of physics do not permit you to generate a truly random number.

But that would mean math is not math, which seems a rather hard pill to swallow.

PRNGs need a seed, and that choice is superdetermined.

The distribution of the experiment results, say correlation in a Bell test, should not matter (significantly) on the choice of seed. But the single electron being sent through the experiment still needs to "know" what the outcome of my PRNG is in order to "know" if it should be spin up or spin down this time.

But the measurement setting (PRNG outcome) can be arbitrarily removed from the seed value (by combining PRNGs in various ways). So that doesn't sound very convincing to me.

It's unclear if you mean PRNG (pseudo random number generator) which is already deterministic, or a true random number source (eg, radioactive decay or something).

If you mean true random, then, yes, superdeterminism does indeed mean that number is predetermined.

Math still works though - there is no way for someone to peek and see what that predetermined number is so it is still random for any observer.

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