Free Will #10 - Delving back into free will with more random numbers

          I’ve been doing a lot of reading about free will lately, and I hope to be able to put together some future entries that update some of my thinking.  I think some of my earlier entries were rather naïve of, if nothing else, the historical context of the ideas I presented.  But that is the nature of learning. 

          Anyway, something came to mind recently, and I’d like to try it out.  It kind of goes back to my “Turing Numbers” <here>, but I have a few more thoughts.

          The question I asked myself was whether a random series of numbers could encode information.  I’m assuming I’m not the first person to try this, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a whole field related to this.  But I wanted to see if I could create a series of numbers that has all the characteristics of a series of random numbers, but in reality encodes a message.  And I want the “message-encoded” random series to be indistinguishable from a truly random series of numbers.

          So, here is what I came up with.  It is a series of 149 binary digits.  I present two such series below.  One of these is random (well, I just used the random number generator in Excel) and the other was created by me and encodes a simple message.  What I wonder is whether you can tell which one is which?

BOX A

1	0	1	0	1	0	1	0	0	0	1	0	1	1	1	0	1	0	1	1
0	1	0	1	1	1	1	0	1	0	1	0	1	0	0	1	1	0	1	0
1	0	1	0	1	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	1	0	1	1
0	0	0	1	0	1	0	1	0	1	0	1	1	0	1	0	1	1	1	0
1	0	1	0	1	0	1	1	0	0	1	0	1	0	1	0	1	0	0	1
1	0	1	1	1	0	1	0	0	1	0	1	1	0	0	1	1	1	0	1
0	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	1	1	0	1	0	0
1	0	1	0	1	1	1	1	1

1’s = 77/149 (51.7%)

BOX B

1	0	1	0	1	0	0	0	1	0	0	1	1	1	0	0	1	1	0	1
0	0	1	1	1	0	1	0	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	1	1	1	0	1
1	0	0	1	1	1	0	0	1	0	0	0	1	0	1	1	1	1	0	0
0	0	1	1	0	0	0	1	0	1	1	0	1	1	0	0	1	1	0	1
0	0	0	1	0	1	1	1	1	0	1	0	1	1	1	1	0	0	1	1
1	0	1	0	1	1	1	0	0	1	0	1	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	1
0	0	1	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	0	1	1
0	1	0	1	1	0	1	0	0

1’s = 74/149 (49.7%)

          There are certainly various statistics you can run on these two sets of numbers.  I will tell you that they are both supposed to represent a 50:50 distribution of 0’s and 1’s – a series of coin flips.  I included the total number of 1’s in each of the two boxes (below each box), and they are both close to 50%.  I did not spend a lot of time trying to work out other ways to characterize this series.  For example, I’m sure that there is a predictable distribution of the number of 1’s in a row for a truly random series, and I did not work hard to make sure that my encoded series met those criteria.  I assume that I could write a computer program to figure out those details for me.  But, the point is, I believe I could match whatever characteristics of the random number sequence you care to measure if I had a long enough series.  Thus I think, without trying to come up with a real mathematical proof, that I could match any simple random series yet still encode information.  I’d be interested if anyone can figure out which of the two series is the “encoded” one; and if so, how you figured it out.  Of course, it would be really impressive if you could figure out the encoded message, but I think you’d need a longer series to figure that out, even if I told you which one had the message.  I think that there is just not enough information to figure out the message…so I would be shocked if someone could figure out the message.  I’ll give the “answer” in my next entry.

          Who cares?  Well, I had this idea and I thought I would try it out.  It has to do with free will and how it can avoid determinism.  Specifically, I was thinking about the random (or indeterminate?) nature of some aspects of quantum mechanics.  My thought would be that maybe we think something is random when it is actually “intentional” and only appears to be random.  Is there any way for us to know the difference between the two?  In general, we think of all material things as being either determined or random.  But is it possible that some (or all??) random things are actually intentional?  By intentional, I mean that some form of “will” imposes on the event to make it happen with a specific desired outcome.  The outcome looks random to us, but it achieves an intentional outcome, not a random one.  It would have no pattern because the “will” doesn’t have a pattern (because, of course, it’s a “free will”).

          So, with my two sets of numbers, I could give one of you the way to break the code and then I could communicate with you through what appear to be random numbers to everyone else.  Is that possible?  It seems to me that, with the appropriate effort on the part of the encoder, it can be done.

          I’m going to jump way ahead for the moment, admitting that this idea is not fully thought-out.  I have been wondering how free will could effect an outcome in the brain without messing with the fundamental laws of physics.  How could an “uncaused cause” (which I believe free will is – see <here>) not mess with the nice, well-characterized, determinant laws of physics?  Well, it seems to me that the idea of information encoded in a random distribution could provide an answer or at least a clue.  If the will is directly affecting what appears to be a random particle path, yet does so without disrupting the properties of that random distribution, it could transmit information (i.e. its intention) without messing up the rest of the physical laws.  Is that possible?  Well, it came to my mind, so I thought I would put it out there.