[jxf]

Everything we do is a stochastic process. If you throw a dart 100 times at a target, it's not going to land at the same spot every time. There is a great deal of uncertainty and non-deterministic behavior in our everyday actions.

[discreteevent]

> throw a dart ... great deal of uncertainty and nongdeterministic behavior in our everyday actions.

Throwing a dart could not be further away from programming a computer. It's one of the most deterministic things we can do. If I write if(n>0) then the computer will execute my intent with 100% accuracy. It won't compare n to 0.005.

You see arguments like yours a lot. It seems to be a way of saying "let's lower the bar for AI". But suppose I have a laser guided rifle that I rely on for my food and someone comes along with a bow and arrow and says "give it a chance, after all lots of things we do are inaccurate, like throwing darts for example". What would you answer?

[jay-barronville]

As much as it’s true that there’s stochasticity involved in just about everything that we do, I’m not sure that that’s equivalent to everything we do being a stochastic process. With your dart example, a very significant amount of the stochasticity involved in the determination of where the dart lands is external to the human thrower. An expert human thrower could easily make it appear deterministic.

[utyop22]

Go say this to a darts player who has hit a 9 darter…..

Actually no wait let’s expand it. Why not go say this to Ronnie O’Sullivan too!

The way you’re describing is such that there is no determinism behind what is being done. Simply not true.

[tankenmate]

a stochastic system can can deterministic sub-parts, a deterministic system cannot have stochastic sub-parts.