Decius comments on Stuff That Makes Stuff Happen - Less Wrong

51 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 October 2012 10:49AM

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Comment author: Decius 17 October 2012 09:54:20PM 1 point [-]

To answer your discussion about randomizing the control groups and experimental groups- you don't use randomness or noise to divide those groups. You divide the population for study into the number of groups you need, and make that division such that those groups are as close to identical as possible, using all of the data you have on all of them.

Thermal noise and pseudo-random numbers can be used to break ties, but only because if there were any known distinction between the two outcomes, the classification would be deterministic.