Listener Mail: Learning to Flinch

a topic we've talked about on the show. But whatever you want to send, it's fine. Send it on to contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Let's see, Rob, I'm going to kick things off today with this response to our first episode on the illusion of control. This comes from Ariel. All right, let's have it, Ariol, says dear Robert and Joe. I hope this message finds you well. My name is Ariel, a software developer from Argentina, and

I'm a huge fan of your podcast. This is the first time I'm reaching out, and I wanted to share some thoughts on your recent episode, The Illusion of Control, Part one, especially regarding the thought experiment about someone else pushing the slot machine button. Your discussion sparked my interest because in the realm of computer software, the generation of random numbers is a fascinating topic that's much more complex

than it may seem at first glance. Generally, the most sophisticated algorithms for generating random numbers significantly consider the physical context, including at the very least the precise timing of pressing a button. The outcome, Specifically, the random number generated could vary even with a delay of a few milliseconds in pressing the button. That doesn't change the chance, but it might change the outcome. So maybe it was what's the

lady's fault that the player lost the bet. While I don't have specific insights into how slot machines are programmed, the principle usually holds true across various applications. Random number generators, or RNGs, play a crucial role here, producing vast sequences of numbers every second without any discernible pattern. These RNGs can be classified mainly into two types. True random number generators or trngs and pseudo random number generators or PRNGs.

Trngs derive randomness from physical phenomena, making it virtually impossible for attackers to predict the sequence of numbers. On the other hand, PRNGs generate numbers based on algorithms and a seed number, which could theoretically be reverse engineered, although the

likelihood is exceedingly low. This distinction is crucial because it highlights how even seemingly insignificant factors like who presses the slot machine button or the exact moment it's pressed, could influence the game's outcome in a system that relies on PRNGs. I thought this perspective might add an interesting layer to your discussion on control and randomness, emphasizing how deeply intertwined physical actions and digital outcomes can be, even in systems

designed to be as unpredictable as slot machines. Thank you for the continuous effort you put into making such thought provoking content. Your show has been a source of endless fascination and learning for me, and I eagerly look forward to each new episode. Please keep up the great work. Best regards, Aril from Argentina. Well, thank you so much Aril.

This is a wonderful email, and it raises a great question about what it really means to cause an outcome and what it really means for an outcome to be random. It's absolutely true what you say that random number generators can be, for example, time based. I remember this is a very primitive example, but I remember when I was in middle school and I was trying to program weird little computer games in que basic. I would use a

demand in the Cubasic code called randomized timer. And the way I understood that is that the code I was writing would use the computer's internal clock as a seed to generate unpredictable pseudo random numbers. Because I think if you try to get Cubasic to generate a random number without doing a command like that, like to pick a seed out from the timer, it would just give you the same random number every time. Not very random.

winning and losing. But I would still say it is sufficiently random from the point of view the player, because while there is a difference, that difference is not something that the player could use to predict or control outcomes. And this is what you meant Aariel when you said that quote. This doesn't change the chance, but it might

change the outcome. So I think you could compare it to how unless you're talking about like a practice cheet or something, two regular people rolling a die will inevitably roll the die differently, and in fact, the same person rolling a die at different times will roll it differently, but neither one is better than the other at getting high dice rolls. There would be no way to predict in advance which role will be better unless you know.

Unless your Laplace's demon and you can like algorithmically calculate the future by knowing the position of every particle and photon in the universe, which we're not that demon. We can't do that. So if somebody rolls your dice for you, in one sense, you could say they caused you to win or lose because they physically set the dice in motion,

so they physically caused whatever the role was. But the way we would normally understand someone to cause you to lose would mean that they did something that could have been predicted to lead you to losing or could be predicted to decrease your chance of winning. And so somebody rolling the dice for you or pressing the slot machine button for you would not be that kind of cause because no matter who does it, the outcome of each

roll or spin is not predictable. Okay, So again I think this really plays on like different ideas of understanding what it would mean to cause an outcome or for that outcome to be random, you know, questions of quantum physics aside. I think you can argue that nothing on the macroscopic scale in the universe is actually random. It's

all physically determined by preceding causes. But lots of stuff is functionally random from our point of view, and functional randomness just means that there's no way for the party in question to predict each outcome in a pattern. There's like no predictable pattern into it, even though there might be predictable overall percentages. It's like, you know, when you

flip a coin. You can predict the outcome of a series of coin flips in a way because over time those coin flips will converge on a fifty to fifty of heads and tails. So you can predict the overall pattern of outcomes, but you cannot predict with better than fifty percent confidence what each individual flip will be.

your true odds of winning. But that's not very helpful in determining what's going to happen on your next spin, except I mean in the sense of telling you that you know most spins you're gonna lose, you will probably, and also in letting you know that you know your odds are low enough that you will eventually run out of money and stop being able to play, and so that's the end of the game for you.

January's listener mail episodes after Duran Duran tunes. However, I'm puzzled as to why I listened to each of these episodes but didn't catch any other Duran Squared related stories or references. What am I missing? Is there something I should know? Whether, No, there's nothing you should know other than I too. Am a longtime durand Ran fan since I first saw the music videos for Wild Boys and View to a Kill on MTV or I don't even think it was MTV, it was a it was a

Canadian channels to the CBC. Once I saw those videos, I like got they got their Hooks in early and I've remained a fan, you know, at least a casual fan, my whole life. But I got to see them in concert just last year. My wife and I went, and they put on such a great show. It like it invited me to go deeper into their discography and discover some really great tunes that I wasn't that familiar with, to rediscover my appreciation for other songs. So that's about

all there is to it. And in general, some months for listener Mail episodes, I'll just randomly choose titles. Well not completely randomly, since we're talking about randomization, but I will I'll say pick an artist and be like, Okay, this month, all the titles are going to be based on track titles by this particular artist.

actual episode. Right. But that's not all that goth mom Light has to share. She continues here quote I have a weird house cinema suggestion for you. Ramikin from twenty eighteen. In this indie horror comedy quote, a college girl is terrorized by a ramikin. Ramikin, of course, is a small little container. We use them all the time in the house for just any time you need to, like, put a snack mix in it, put a small amount of soup in it, you know, whatever the case may be.

it is available on YouTube for free. High fives, y'all, goth momline.

looked this up. So I've never seen the show Psych, though I do know about it for a strange reason, I can mention it in a minute. But I looked at the screenshot that Mike shared here and I checked in, Well, that's Delay Hill as Mama Walde there, and I really got to say, the costumes are dead on both of them, down to Mama wal Day's like bushy eyebrows and sculpted sideburns. They really did their research to match these movie characters.

The La stat costume is also very close. As I said, I've never seen the show Psych, but I'm well aware of it because Robert, I suspect this must have happened to you at some point. Also, it's an example of where I had an idea for the premise of a story that I wanted to write, but I did a quick check to see if there was already something out there with this premise, and there was, and it was

the show Psych. So the idea was, I was like, what if there was a story where a character was like an amateur detective who wanted to work as a detective but didn't have credentials, and so they just pretended to be a psychic using their actual, like you know, logically derived insights, but presenting them as one of these psychics who consults with police departments on cases, which has

happened in reality in some cases strangely. So that was my idea, but I looked it up and that's apparently exactly the premise of Psych.

at least locally owned video rental. Especially it's big. I mean it's big to me. It's important to me. But yeah, it's not like corporations at all. I mean, is there big video rental anymore? I'm not sure. I don't think, but I will say, yeah, support your local video rental stores if you were lucky enough to have them. Still they need you, and deep down you need them, and you know it. Especially again we've discussed the advantages of

physical media when it comes to films. You know you can count on your video store as long as it's around to have those films for you. If you own those discs, you own them and you can watch them whenever you want. It's very I think to everyone at this point that you just can't count on streaming sources to have the films you want to watch in the cuts you want to watch them when you need them, without even getting into like cool extras and so forth.

All right, that's a tangent. But anyway, Chris continues, at least you could make it up to me by doing an episode on creation of the Humanoids, which I seem to recall Robert swearing to do on a stack of credit cards. This is what you get for triggering survivors of the VHS Beta Max Wars of the mid seventies to mid eighties. Even so, thank you for introducing me to Carol Zaemon's Invention for Destruction. I enjoyed watching it tremendously.

dice result is not the main reason for rolling important checks. Differently, in Dungeons and Dragons, building suspense is fun, and you might roll it more properly to ensure that there is no argument about the result. On the other hand, there are a lot of fun rituals like praying to the almighty dice God or sending quote unquote bad dice to jail.

But there are other reasons people might appear to be concentrating over a dice throw, for example, to make sure that the dice throw is legal like this, you know, they throw it in the right area, doesn't bounce off the table or something and get an invalid result, or maybe hit something and displace it. If you've got like miniature set up on a tabletop RPG, so you know,

you might roll carefully so you don't hit that. So there are legitimate reasons to concentrate on a dice throw, I guess, apart from thinking it will help you get the number you want, though, I do still think people do it to try to get the number they want. And then the second thing you say is about building suspense. I think that's a legitimate thing too. Yeah, it's like

a drum roll. It's like a you know, acting it out so everybody at the table can have fun anticipating the result of this this pivotal event.

It's it's been with me a long.

to them while we were recording this episode. And uh yeah, as usual, will remind you that Listener Mail's air on Monday, Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday, short form episode on Wednesday, and Weird House Cinema on Fridays, in which we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about.