• 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        101
        ·
        8 months ago

        If you discount the pop-culture numbers (for us 7, 42, and 69) its the number most often chosen by people if you ask them for a random number between 1 and 100. It just seems the most random one to choose for a lot of people. Veritasium just did a video about it.

      • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        18
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        Probably just because it’s prime. It’s just that humans are terrible at understanding the concept of randomness. A study by Theodore P. Hill showed that when tasked to pick a random number between 1 and 10, almost a third of the subjects (n was over 8500) picked 7. 10 was the least picked number (if you ditch the few idiots that picked 0).

          • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            edit-2
            8 months ago

            I remember watching a lecture about probability, and the professor said that only quantum processes are really random, the rest of things that we call random is just the human inability to measure the variables that affects the random outcome. I’m an actuarie, and it’s made me change the perspective on how I see and study random processes and how it made think on ways to influence the outcome of random processes.

            • jarfil@beehaw.org
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              8
              ·
              edit-2
              8 months ago

              …which is kind of a hilarious tautology, because “quantum processes” are by definition “processes that we are unable to decompose into more basic parts”.

              The moment we learn about some more fundamental processes being the reason for a given process, it stops being “quantum” and the new ones become “it”.

            • K0W4L5K1@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              8 months ago

              Even quantum just appears random I think. it’s beyond our scope of perspective, it works in multiple dimensions. we only see part of the process. That’s my guess though it could be totally wrong

              • itslilith
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                4
                ·
                8 months ago

                it’s a matter of interpretation, but generally the consensus is that quantum measurements are truly probabilistic (random), Bell proved that there can’t be any hidden variables that influence the outcome

                • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  4
                  ·
                  8 months ago

                  Didn’t Bell just put that up as a theory and it got proven somewhat recently by other researchers? The 2022 physics Nobel Prize was about disproving hidden variables and they titled their finding with the catchy phrase “the universe is not locally real”.

                  • itslilith
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    4
                    ·
                    8 months ago

                    He proved it mathematically, but it was only recently confirmed experimentally

                • K0W4L5K1@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  8 months ago

                  Interpretation for sure. Bells theory and then it being proven winning a Nobel prize to me only proves more we really don’t understand the world around us and only perceive what we need to survive. And that maybe we should be less standoffish to ideas that change our current paradigm, because we obviously have a lot to learn.

                  • itslilith
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    8 months ago

                    Bells inequality is a statement about math, it gives an inequality that could only be violated if there were no local hidden variables (read: if measurements were truly random). That was a statement of math, which is rigorously provable. It took experimental confirmation, but we can now say with high confidence that there are no local hidden variables (i.e. there is no information hidden that we simply cannot measure, instead the outcome is only decided the moment you measure).

                    Global hidden variables are still an option, but they would require much of the rest of physics to be rewritten

      • gigachad@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        8 months ago

        I didn’t know either, but it seems to be an often picked ‘random’ number by people. Here is an article about it, I didn’t read it though.