Free Will #11 – Hints about random numbers

          This entry is just to provide some hints to the number series I presented in entry #10 on Free Will <*here*>.

          If you don’t want to see any hints, then don’t scroll down. 

Previously I presented this:

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%)

          I said 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 someone could figure out the encoded message, but I think they would need a longer series to figure that out, even if I told you which one had the message. 

First Hint

The message is encoded as individual alphabetical letters.

Each letter is five bits.

Scroll down for more hints…

Second Hint

There is a four bit flag to indicate whether the subsequent data is useful or gibberish.

Third Hint

So, to be clear, the bits are arranged in groups of nine, where the first four bits combine to produce a flag and the last five bits are the data.  If the flag is up, then the next five bits are valid data indicating the next letter in the sentence.  If the flag is down, the next five bits can be ignored and you move to the next flag.

Fourth Hint

The “real data” flag is “0101”.

Fifth Hint

Letter coding is as follows:

Sixth Hint

OK.  The message says “I am alive” and it is in Box A.

Note that with this method, you would have to know that you have the start of the message because everything is counted from that first bit.  So, I also imagined that there would be two “start/stop” five bit “letters”:  “10000” and “01111” that, when they appear, indicate that the subsequent four bits form one of the flags.  Thus, if you broke in the middle of intercepting this series, you could still figure out the starting point for the message by identifying a start and stop bit.

Hope that makes sense.

I think a computer could figure this out because of the likely high rate of the “0101” flag series at multiples of nine.  But, because of the flag, you can always add as much gibberish as you want, so I imagined that you could just add all of the four bit “non-flags” to match the frequency of the real flags.  That would mean that there would be 15 gibberish fields (9 bits) for every one real field. 

This series requires a “mind” to make it appear truly random.  By that I mean that you really have to keep track of a lot of things for the series to work.  For example, you can’t just generate random series of 9 bits for the gibberish because a random series will sometimes start with the “0101” series of bits, which you have reserved as a flag.  Also, depending on the letters in the sentence, if you want to maintain the overall random nature of the whole set, you have to select gibberish series that counteract whatever trends their might be in the data series.  For example, if you have a sentence with a lot of “X”s in it, which is encoded as “00001”, then your whole set will tend to be highly skewed to “0” bits unless your gibberish tends to have more “1” bits in it.  Obviously in any random series it doesn’t have to work out to exactly 50:50, but you have to keep running count of the characteristics of the series and add gibberish that tends to move those characteristics back to the characteristics of the totally random series.  This could be done by a computer program that tracks the characteristics of the series so far and then adjusts the random selection of bits by weighting the selection towards the desired characteristics.  Ultimately, you’d need to track not just the total ratio of “0” and “1”s, but also the rate of bit pairs, triplets, quadruplets, etc.  This concept is very inefficient in terms of the data delivered compared to the total bits delivered, but I’m not sure that efficiency is required for my original proposition.  The point is you could encode information in what otherwise seems to be random bits.  If there really is a fundamental quantum randomness to everything, how could it be proven that there is not information encoded in that randomness?

My original point was to address the question of whether free will could act, yet not violate basic physical laws like conservation of energy.  I guess others have postulated that free will just re-distributes energy without creating or destroying any, and essentially that is what I am proposing here.  The energy is redistributed so that it encodes real information.

In my example, free will would be very inefficient because it would spend most of “it’s” time re-distributing energy just to create gibberish that would be ignored.  But this is not a problem in my concept of free will.  I don’t believe free will is involved in most “decisions” that we make.  I think most of the time we live our lives in some kind of autopilot and we really don’t often “break out” of the cause and effect cycle.  I think that, to a large extend, our biological brain is a deterministic system with a bit of randomness thrown in.  On rare occasions our free will breaks through and actually influences a decision.  In fact, this might only happen a few times a day…or maybe it is even much rarer than that…maybe our free will only really steps in a few times in our life.  If we look back on our life, there are decision-points that really shape who we are, and in between there is a lot of just “living life” in which we are just responding to what is in front of us.

An interesting outcome of my suggested method of free will action is that whenever you do intervene with free will (i.e. when you do enter the “up” flag and then real data) there is a the need to “balance it out” with gibberish.  I think this matches the human experience pretty well.  When I do something really good for someone that is “out of my comfort zone”, I feel this sense that “ok – now I can go back to being my average self”.  And if I do something like three good deeds in a row, there is this sense that “ok – now I’m allowed to do something that is not so great.”  But maybe that’s going too far with my extrapolation here.  I have a feeling that I will have to revisit this thought many times and tighten it up ... or maybe abandon it entirely.

Experimenting - #19 – Test Tube #2 – Entry #1

          I ended the previous entry on this topic <*here*> by saying that I think God does want to communicate with us, but He won’t be rude.  He’s not going to yell.  This goes back to the “if God is there, all he has to do is make himself obvious” discussion <*here*>.  Why doesn’t God yell?  It seems like it would be so easy if He did!

          Well, why do we yell?  We yell because we want to make sure the other person listens.  We use it for emphasis.  THIS IS A REALLY IMPORTANT POINT.  Well, really, I just used that last phrase as an example.  For those of us who grew up with the concept that capital letters indicate yelling, just seeing something written in all caps raises our blood pressure a point or two.  Yelling is often associated with anger.  Or it is associated with the feeling that you are being ignored.  We can be in a crowded place – a noisy restaurant for example – where the din is deafening, but it one person starts yelling at another person, our attention will immediately be drawn to that person.  If there is a lot of yelling, that’s usually not a good sign.  If God yelled, we’d listen!

          But, sometimes I intentionally don’t yell when I am trying to make a point.  That happens when I have the upper hand.  I don’t yell because in my mind I say something like: “well, if you don’t want to hear what I have to say, that’s your problem.”  This type of thinking, by the way, is why I’m not a great educator or parent!  Anyway, sometimes I just think of yelling as being “beneath me.”  Why should I have to yell?  You’re the one who needs to know what I already know.  That’s my pigheaded pride speaking.  I don’t think God necessarily would see it exactly the same way, but I can definitely see that yelling is beneath Him.  If there really is a God, he surely doesn’t need us; but we surely need him.  So why should he stoop to our level to yell when we are the ones who need to stop talking and listen?

          There’s another thing though.  Have you ever tried to catch a wild animal and turn it into a pet?  Growing up I always imagined I could catch a bird or a squirrel and turn it into a pet that would hang around with me.  I had a few occasions where I saw a bird that was injured and so I would try to come up to it and pick it up.  When you approach a bird like that, you don’t come up running and yelling.  You have no chance if you do that.  You approach the bird slowly and speak in low tones. You can’t make a wild animal a pet by scare tactics.  People good at this sort of thing are called “whisperers” for a reason.  Yelling is out of the question.  I think God is in a similar situation - at least the God described by Christians (the “such a” God)…He apparently wants some kind of relationship with human beings that isn’t established through intimidation.  So yes, God could yell and make you cower, but what’s the point of that?

          As a skeptic I could say sarcastically “well – isn’t that highly convenient?  You come up with a God who has reasons not to be obvious.  Isn’t the more obvious explanation to the lack of evidence for God that there simply is no God?”  This bothers me because it’s a good point.  It certainly would make everything a lot easier if we were searching for an “obvious God” rather than a “subtle God.”  We can easily rule out an obvious God – at least an obvious God who yells!  But, the point is, if we are serious about searching, we have to give the subtle God a chance.  Opening Test Tube #2 is about giving the subtle God that chance – that chance to whisper.

          Test Tube #2 is communication with God.  Most religions would call it “prayer” and I’ll use that term here, but prayer usually has a lot of elements and broad meanings to it.  What I am talking about here when I say “prayer” has three important elements:  1) go to a quiet place, 2) talk to God, and 3) listen to God.

          Actually, I would recommend Test Tube #2 to anyone, regardless of whether they believe in a god or not, regardless of whether they are seeking, and regardless of whether there actually is a god or not.  True, you could find yourself talking to a wall (if “talking to God” is the same as “talking to nothing”), but the very act of going to a quiet place for a few minutes is, in my opinion, extremely valuable for human beings.  It sounds so simple, but in practice, if you live where most people live (in or near cities) and have a life that most people have (hectic), it’s not so easy!  Let’s think about this very simple act of “going to a quiet place.”

          First of all, a quiet place is both physical and mental.  In my experience, you need both to coincide.  I’m not talking about a metaphysical experience here.  I’m just being very practical and concrete.  A quiet place is one that is free of distractions and, as much as possible, free of potential distractions.  It’s also a place where you can be totally comfortable.  I am not comfortable talking to God in the presence of others.  I am not comfortable talking to God in a situation where any human being could hear me or even see me.  I need a place that is hidden.  Safe in every way.  Places I have found in the past include a locked room or a tucked away room (basements are good for that), a walk in the woods, or, at one apartment I lived in, I found a place tucked away behind the furnace.  More recently, I find the best thing in the world is a solo cross-country drive.  But in a busy city with a busy life, I have to say that physically finding a quiet spot is just not easy.  There can be noise, of course, in a quiet spot – it just can’t be distracting.

          The mental part is even harder.  It takes a while to stop thinking about all the things you have to do.  Frequently I make sure I have some way of taking notes, so that when various issues come to mind, I can write them down.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to start praying and suddenly I remember a dozen tasks that I haven’t thought of in weeks.  Why does that happen?  Well, it’s because we never stop to be quiet for any reason, not just for prayer.  This is why I recommend a “quieting down time” for everyone.  But there’s a deeper purpose that I’m proposing here.

          The second element of prayer is to “talk to God.”  All I’m suggesting here is to talk to God in plain language and say what you think.  It could be:  “Well, here I am.  I don’t think you’re there, God, and I think this whole thing is stupid, but, well, let’s hear it.”  That would be a really good start, in my opinion.  You can say more, of course, but only if you want.  Tell Him what He needs to do to get you to believe.  If you are facing something difficult, ask Him to help you through it.  There’s nothing magical here – either God is there and has the ability to hear you, or He’s not there or is deaf.  You can talk out loud or just think these things silently.  There is no deep meditation needed.  It is simple.

          The third element of prayer is listening, and we will deal with that next time.  You could actually skip the talking and go straight to listening, but I find it is helpful if I express my own thoughts.  It’s helpful to me, anyway. 

          How much should you “pray” in this manner?  Well, at least once.  But if you want a serious attempt at this, I would make the same suggestion I made with respect to reading the Bible.  A serious attempt, to me, would be praying daily for three months.  That is actually very hard to do and I have no real basis for picking that period.  And it’s not like if you miss a day you have to “start over”.  This isn’t about gaining some kind of points with God – it’s just about making a serious attempt that I think most of us would agree is really a serious attempt.  If you’re trying to lose weight or stop smoking or change any other habit, you’ve got to go more than a few days for sure.  One month is good, but seems barely there.  A quarter of a year – a season – seems like a really good goal.  Try it.