[Avodah] Kosher Switch Really Random?

[Moshe Yehuda Gluck via Avodah]

R’ Shmuel Weidberg:

The makers say that there is a certain amount of randomization involved in whether the light flashes into the detector and whether the detector detects the light. 

There is an issue with this that would not be known to those who aren't computer scientists and that is that computers cannot actually create random numbers. They create pseudo-random numbers which means they take a seed number and perform a complex calculation on it to get the next number, which looks like it bears no relation to the first number, but which in fact is completely determined by the first number.

<SNIP>

In short I am saying that however much Kosher Switch claims that there is a random chance of the switch not going on, it is not really random. At the time the switch is flicked the computer "knows" whether it will go on, it simply pretends that it doesn't and goes through the motions.

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Isn’t the lomdus of their approach that you, the person flicking the switch, doesn’t DO anything because you’re only covering a light pulse without knowing when it will come next? So it doesn’t really matter if it’s random, it matters that you don’t know when it will next illuminate. 

KT,
MYG 

 

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