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gizmo686 | 12 days ago

All models are wrong, some are useful.

Yes, there are theoretical issues with assuming PRNGs are truly random. However, there are also theoretical issues with assuming that Newton's law of universal gravitation is true.

I am confident is saying that more experiments have gone wrong due to not considering relativity, than have gone wrong due to the proper usage of a statistically sound (even if not cryptographically so) PRNG.

I also suspect that both classes of errors are dwarfed by improper usage or non sound PRNGs.

discuss

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contubernio|11 days ago

Those are qualitatively different issues. Newtonian gravity is very precise in a certain regime according to centuries of experiments. The issues with specific orngs are in many cases not even carefully analyzed.

bicepjai|10 days ago

Newton’s gravity vs Relativity is a matter of precision. Newtonian mechanics is a limiting case of general relativity that works excellently within known bounds. PRNGs, by contrast, can fail categorically, not just in precision. A PRNG with subtle correlations doesn’t just give you a slightly less accurate answer, it can produce systematically biased results that look perfectly fine until they don’t. The failure modes are qualitatively different.