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Perplexed comments on The Absolute Self-Selection Assumption - Less Wrong
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Comments (38)
Not in a finite amount of time.
What do you mean?
Drawing from a continuous distribution happens fairly often, so your comment confuses me. Or maybe you'd say that those aren't "really infinite" and are confined to a certain number of bits, but quantum mechanics would be an exception to that.
As Cyan pointed out, when you choose a number confined to a certain number of bits, you are actually choosing from among the rationals.
I don't understand your reference to QM. I wasn't objecting to the randomness aspect. I was simply pointing out that to actually receive that randomly chosen real, you will (almost certainly) need to receive an infinite number of bits, and assuming finite channel capacity, that will take an infinite amount of time. So that event you mentioned, the one with an infinitesimal probability (zero probability for all practical purposes) is not going to actually happen (i.e. finish happening).
It was a minor quibble, which I now regret making.