>I once met a man who had worked in a casino as an electronics technician.
>He was responsible for maintaining the computers when they broke down. He
>told me that there was no element of chance except in the minds of the
>"gamblers", and that the payoffs, frequencies and cycles were all
>controlled by him. So maybe Glenn or whoever, should choose another
>example for his illustration, because, Las Vegas (or the shell games on the
>sidewalks of NYC) are not where gambling is taking place. Maybe at an
>honest card game, but there it is hard to escape the elements of design and
>decision.
But Art, that is my point. The casinos design their random number
generators to have a particular bias. A slot that never paid out
(deterministic) would cease having people play. A slot that pays off only
1/50 times an amount that is less than 50 times the input, is guaranteed in
the long run to make money for the owner. But it is still chance operating
the system, but it is a designed system. Chance and design are not
incompatible and that is why I choose the casino example.
>Art
>http://geology.swau.edu
>
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glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution