Question I am really interested with philosophy and I can get why many things are put into question. What I do not get is why some people even bother with questions such as: Can there ever be a truly random event? Why should we even care about something like this? It seems like the answer (if it were ever reached) would add no value to our lives. Steve, 17

Accepted:
June 2, 2006

Comments

Are you sure there's nothing to be learned from such a question? The question in what sense radioactive decay, for example, is random is an important question in the foundations of physics, and improving our understanding of the world seems a valuable enterprise. The question how we understand randomness is also important to the foundations of cryptography, because cryptographic ciphers typically require a source of random bits: If the bits aren't really random, then perhaps they can be predicted, and the cipher can be broken. It needs no emphasis how important cryptography is in the age of electronic mail and electronic banking.