Random thoughts

Twice in the past two weeks I have listened to very nice people explain to me how a perpetual motion machine might work.

One was variably a yacht or a plane, where a surface coating not only reduced frictional drag but also magically provided thrust.

The other was a drone that captured the energy of rotation by adding alternators to the drive-shafts, hence generating the energy to motivate the thing.

Now I don’t see it as my job to explain the first and second beliefs of thermodynamics to every lay person with a dream.

I mean, I would if they actually started building one. But if it’s just beer talk, what’s the harm?

Coincidentally a nice young ‘inventor’ contacted me yesterday and he wants my help to commercialise his invention.

He has developed an algorithm, he says, that sees order in what has always been considered by everyone else to be random.

He is claiming to be able to use this to make predictions. I have offered to him the Forex market as a test bed, although knowing that this isn’t entirely random. But hey.

It got me wondering, what law of maths or physics states that there is no way to make predictions from studying randomness?

Nuh, it’s just a definition. If we can’t find anyway to make prediction from studying numbers then they must be random, for now.

Rather usefully, mathematical theory restates it thus; randomness implies that there must be an infinite expansion of information for randomness to exist.

You see, there are no fundamental laws of mathematics, just a bunch of circular collective beliefs. It’s no way to spend your life me thinks.