Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbatt!ihnp4!ucbvax!brahms!desj
From: desj@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (David desJardins)
Newsgroups: net.physics,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Quantum free will
Message-ID: <15666@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Sat, 13-Sep-86 19:43:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.15666
Posted: Sat Sep 13 19:43:28 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 14-Sep-86 07:27:48 EDT
References: <179@sri-arpa.ARPA> <123@omepd> <129@omepd> <15600@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <1433@psivax.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: desj@brahms.UUCP (David desJardins)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 20
Xref: watmath net.physics:5164 talk.philosophy.misc:13

In article <1433@psivax.UUCP> friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>>   As has been noted, carrying information is different from computational
>>power.  A machine with a RNG is in certain ways more powerful than one
>>without.  It is certainly a better poker player!
>
>	Here I agree with you, the brain needs, and almost certainly
>has, a randomness generator, perhaps more than one. I rather doubt
>this takes the form of a random *number* generator though. Of course
>any randomness generator can be constructed from a RNG, so this is not
>a computationally significant point.

   This is the only point I was trying to make, so I think we are in
essential agreement.  I certainly did not mean to claim that *every*
part of the brain is highly nondeterministic (obviously the firing of
the optic neurons is almost completely determined by the detection of
photons by the retina), only that *some* parts of the brain can reason-
ably be expected to behave randomly/nondeterministically/chaotically
(chaos + small randomness = total randomness).

   -- David desJardins