From: ldo@nz.invalid   
      
   On Fri, 28 Mar 2025 21:16:29 -0000 (UTC), I wrote:   
      
   > The definition of “randomness” is “you don’t know what’s coming   
   next”.   
   > How do you prove you don’t know something? You can’t. There are various   
   > statistical tests for randomness, but remember that a suitably encrypted   
   > message can pass every one of them, and a person who knows the message   
   > knows that the bitstream is not truly random.   
      
   Here’s an even simpler proof, by reductio ad absurdum.   
      
   Suppose you have a sequence of numbers which is provably random. Simply   
   pregenerate a large bunch of numbers according to that sequence, and store   
   them. Then supply them one by one to another party. The other party   
   doesn’t know what’s coming next, but you do. Therefore they are not random   
   to you.   
      
   Which contradicts the original assumption of provable randomness. QED.   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)