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Comment by jvanderbot | Hacker News Reader

My mental model is that the brain has some kind of pseudorandom idea generator. Like any pseudorandom generator, it needs a wide array of inputs. I bet walking around provides all kinds of muscular and sensory inputs, as well as increased blood flow and engagement of most parts of the brain which is precisely what is required for pseudorandom creativity.

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This also explains why I need time off after hard, creative work; or why vacation is so helpful. I need to repopulate entropy.

Why would it be pseudorandom? If the brain is natural, wouldn't it just be random?

Randomness is an abstraction for "we don't know how it works".

So... Random = Pseudorandom?

I mean, maybe. It's a rather philosophical question in the end. Can there be true randomness in the universe or is everything in some way deterministic, but it's just that the underlying system is so complex that it can never be computable. And is a deterministic, but uncomputable, system actually deterministic?

FWIW, the hidden-variable theory, that the universe is deterministic and we just lack all information to predict it, has been considered and rejected by physicists.

https://www.askamathematician.com/2009/12/q-do-physicists-re... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory

While that is a pretty good 'laymans' description of Bell's theory, I do find it quite funny that step 3 of their proof that randomness exists requires you to "choose 2 random numbers".

Reminded me of the "Free Will" thesis by Sam Harris.

Randomness can be an abstraction even over a known more fundamental underlying model (similar to temperature vs. molecular motion) but it can be as fundamental as electron or anything else in a specific model (quantum mechanics).

If the entire nervous system contributes to cognition, then you would assume that stimulating more of the body would stimulate more cognition – or "pseudorandom ideas".

There's such a thing as overstimulation. There is probably an optinal degree of stimulation to encourage cognition without overloading it.

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