drawer in the workbench and pulls out a rectangular metal box a little larger than the receptor doodad he showed me earlier. He hands it to me. The thing is featureless except for a little clear plastic panel that hides a recessed button. Next to the button is a glowing green LED light. I press on the panel and it slides open.
“ Don’t push that!” Heller shouts, suddenly panicked. “You’ll wipe out all my data!”
I slide the panel back. “OK, OK. What is it, some kind of electromagnetic pulse weapon?”
“ Not a weapon, but it does generate an EMP. In any case, wiping out magnetic media is a side effect. The purpose of the device is to disrupt the central nervous system.”
“ But it’s not a weapon,” I say dryly.
“ The effect on a human being is minimal. You probably wouldn’t even feel it. But it will disrupt your central nervous system slightly for about a millisecond. Just long enough to slow down your motor response a little for a few seconds afterward. So that if you were to, say, toss a coin during that period, the result might be different than if you hadn’t been hit by the randomizer.”
I ’m looking over the device. It sure doesn’t look like much. “So Tali had one of these on her. That’s how she manipulated the coin toss.”
“ Yes,” says Heller.
Something is still bugging me. “Isn’t this thing, the randomizer, part of the deterministic system too? How is using this device any different than trying to stop the event by calling the police?”
He smiles, as if anticipating the question. “Very good. You’re exactly right. The magic of the randomizer isn’t in the electromagnetic pulse it sends out, but in the way it determines whether to send the pulse. You see, inside the box is a small amount of a radioactive isotope. Don’t worry, it isn’t dangerous. The isotope emits a particle about once every two seconds, and there’s a component that detects the particles as they are emitted. The device has a counter that is always set to either one or zero. If, during a given second, a particle is detected, then the device sets the counter to one. If it doesn’t detect a particle, the counter is set to zero. The randomizer will only emit a pulse if the trigger is pushed while the counter is at one. If it’s at zero, the randomizer will do nothing.”
I ’m now thoroughly confused. “So it doesn’t work half the time?”
“ The probability isn’t actually fifty/fifty, for reasons that are difficult to explain, but for our purposes, let’s say that it doesn’t emit a pulse half the time. That isn’t the same as it not working half the time. Although it’s also true that the interference doesn’t work half the time. It’s very complicated.”
Yes, it is. Heller proceeds to explain it, but it doesn ’t really penetrate. I’m going to do my best to reconstruct his explanation from my memory, later reading in his book, and other research (mostly Wikipedia). Again, you can skip this part if you don’t really give a shit how the randomizer works.
SKIP THIS PART
Essentially the randomizer works a lot like a real-life Schrödinger’s cat. In Schrödinger’s thought experiment, the cat is either alive or dead because of something that happens at the subatomic scale. Since there is a fifty percent chance of a particle being emitted over a certain time frame, the cat has a fifty percent chance of being alive and a fifty percent chance of being dead. The essence of the experiment is the transference of quantum indeterminacy from the subatomic level to a macro level. And along with this indeterminacy comes true randomness: it is impossible to predict whether a particle will be emitted, and therefore the cat’s status is non-deterministic, which is to say that it’s objectively random.
In fact , I found at least one company online that sells devices similar to Heller’s randomizer (without the electromagnetic pulse part, of course). You can buy a device that
“ Don’t push that!” Heller shouts, suddenly panicked. “You’ll wipe out all my data!”
I slide the panel back. “OK, OK. What is it, some kind of electromagnetic pulse weapon?”
“ Not a weapon, but it does generate an EMP. In any case, wiping out magnetic media is a side effect. The purpose of the device is to disrupt the central nervous system.”
“ But it’s not a weapon,” I say dryly.
“ The effect on a human being is minimal. You probably wouldn’t even feel it. But it will disrupt your central nervous system slightly for about a millisecond. Just long enough to slow down your motor response a little for a few seconds afterward. So that if you were to, say, toss a coin during that period, the result might be different than if you hadn’t been hit by the randomizer.”
I ’m looking over the device. It sure doesn’t look like much. “So Tali had one of these on her. That’s how she manipulated the coin toss.”
“ Yes,” says Heller.
Something is still bugging me. “Isn’t this thing, the randomizer, part of the deterministic system too? How is using this device any different than trying to stop the event by calling the police?”
He smiles, as if anticipating the question. “Very good. You’re exactly right. The magic of the randomizer isn’t in the electromagnetic pulse it sends out, but in the way it determines whether to send the pulse. You see, inside the box is a small amount of a radioactive isotope. Don’t worry, it isn’t dangerous. The isotope emits a particle about once every two seconds, and there’s a component that detects the particles as they are emitted. The device has a counter that is always set to either one or zero. If, during a given second, a particle is detected, then the device sets the counter to one. If it doesn’t detect a particle, the counter is set to zero. The randomizer will only emit a pulse if the trigger is pushed while the counter is at one. If it’s at zero, the randomizer will do nothing.”
I ’m now thoroughly confused. “So it doesn’t work half the time?”
“ The probability isn’t actually fifty/fifty, for reasons that are difficult to explain, but for our purposes, let’s say that it doesn’t emit a pulse half the time. That isn’t the same as it not working half the time. Although it’s also true that the interference doesn’t work half the time. It’s very complicated.”
Yes, it is. Heller proceeds to explain it, but it doesn ’t really penetrate. I’m going to do my best to reconstruct his explanation from my memory, later reading in his book, and other research (mostly Wikipedia). Again, you can skip this part if you don’t really give a shit how the randomizer works.
SKIP THIS PART
Essentially the randomizer works a lot like a real-life Schrödinger’s cat. In Schrödinger’s thought experiment, the cat is either alive or dead because of something that happens at the subatomic scale. Since there is a fifty percent chance of a particle being emitted over a certain time frame, the cat has a fifty percent chance of being alive and a fifty percent chance of being dead. The essence of the experiment is the transference of quantum indeterminacy from the subatomic level to a macro level. And along with this indeterminacy comes true randomness: it is impossible to predict whether a particle will be emitted, and therefore the cat’s status is non-deterministic, which is to say that it’s objectively random.
In fact , I found at least one company online that sells devices similar to Heller’s randomizer (without the electromagnetic pulse part, of course). You can buy a device that
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