I want to chime in with a caveat about random number generators. After people who claimed paranormal abilities to predict cards and so on were debunked, paranormal investigators retreated to the concept that people could influence random number generators or could predict what random number generators would generate. Now they were dealing with hundreds of thousands of trials done quickly via machines. And lo and behold -- some anomalies occurred. I actually visited one such laboratory.
So investigators were confronted with either finding flaws with the RNG's, which were probably more sophisticated than video poker RNG's, or concluding that paranormal abilities on some quantum level existed. For the most part, they chose the latter. Debunkers went after their results by attacking the RNG's.
My point is that the nature of the alleged randomness of various RNG's has been debated for decades. It's not some cut-and-dried, we-know-this-for-a-fact conclusion that the RNG's used in video poker play are flawless.
It's easy to say, "Yeah, we all know RNG's work." That doesn't make it so.
And, if you want to take the pro-paranormal side, one can make the case that those studies indicated that individuals could either (1) influence RNG's or (2) somehow know what the RNG's were going to do. You had to choose one or the other, if the math was correct -- either something was wrong with the RNG's or people could affect them.




Reply With Quote
