Deterministic Randomness Exposed

Description

A simple meme shows terminal-style prompt text at the top: ">Random number generator", ">look inside", and ">deterministic". Below the text is a close-up wide-angle photo of a startled-looking cat staring into the camera, with a small "imgflip.com" watermark in the lower-left corner. The joke is that most everyday random number generators are deterministic pseudorandom algorithms once you inspect the implementation, even though their output appears random at the API boundary. For experienced developers, it points at the important distinction between reproducible PRNGs used for simulations or tests and entropy-backed randomness needed for security-sensitive code.

Comments

Anonymous ★ Top Pick The randomness was deterministic all along; only the bug reports were truly nondeterministic.

Anonymous ★ Top Pick

The randomness was deterministic all along; only the bug reports were truly nondeterministic.
Anonymous

Randomness is just determinism with a seed you forgot to log.
@peajack 2mo

because you forgot the word pseudo-
@M4lenov 2mo

Last case for me was Dice100 in DaggerfallUnity (but one could say it was deliberately done to prevent excessive savescumming)
@GreatFireDragon 2mo

Deterministic rngs are the best. If the game is too random TAS won't be possible.
@Greg_Faster 1mo

Just like human brain is. 🙈
[poor^2] crud 1mo

ok
Zeno Bin Kanaan 1mo

No such thing as random even IRL. Randomness is entirely a thing of perspective. The less predictable something is the more "random" it appears.
1. _ 1mo
  
  Quantum collapse is fully unpredictable. Otherwise I agree, but still call things random when they're unpredicatble enough