Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ucsbcsl!silber@sbphy.ucsb.edu
From: silber@sbphy.ucsb.edu
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: free will and errant gamma rays
Message-ID: <1499@hub.ucsb.edu>
Date: 20 Apr 89 16:30:18 GMT
Sender: news@hub.ucsb.edu
Organization: UC, Santa Barbara. Physics Computer Services
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Even if one knows the architecture, program, and initial state of
some deterministic man/machine, one cannot with certainty predict
the sequence of machine states which it will traverse when executing
the program, BECAUSE it is not executing the program in a vacuum.
At any instant, an errant gamma ray may twiddle a bit here or there
and so on.  So, the choice one makes may be 'determined' locally by
the unperturbed locally-deterministic environment OR it may, by 'chance'
be determined by some event originating in a larger, possibly undeterministic
context.  (and even if the larger context (i.e. the distant nebula where
the gamma ray originates) is also deterministic, the lcoal system 
reacts to the gamma ray AS IF a free-will-choice were made)
So as far as man made a-i machines are concerned, maybe, at some point,
one might want to specifically include some physical random event
generator (a lump of radium or some such radioactivbe source) ?????????