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Randomness isn't the issue

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Saturday, 25 February 2017, at 10:00 p.m.

In Response To: Dice Apps & arc4random_uniform(6) (Michael Mesich)

There is a tendency in these sorts of discussions to focus on mathematical or statistical definitions of randomness. I'd like to suggest that this largely misses the point. What matters to most people is the assurance that nobody is controlling the dice rolls or is able to predict the dice rolls.

Admittedly, extremely lopsided physical dice will produce undesirable results, but slightly biased dice are generally not a problem as long as nobody knows what the bias is. Conversely, it is not hard to produce a sequence of rolls that passes every statistical test but which is known to someone in advance; this is obviously unacceptable.

A major concern with electronic dice is that because they are (typically) less "transparent" than physical dice, it is harder to gain assurance that nobody is controlling them. Once again, assurances that the algorithm is super-duper and passes all kinds of statistical tests are largely irrelevant, if they do not address the issue of control.

Computer scientists have long understood that the only way for me to be sure that electronic dice are not controlled by someone else is for me to have personal input into the dice rolls. The basic concept is this: My opponent and I each secretly generate a number from 1 to 6, and the actual die roll is the sum of the two secret numbers (minus 6 if the total is larger than 6). Of course there have to be protocols in place to guarantee secrecy and non-repudiation and so forth, but the main point is that even if my opponent is cheating by generating non-random numbers, I can always neutralize that by making sure that my own number is random according to standards that I am comfortable with.

If people are serious about wanting to address concerns about electronic dice then I think that the focus should be on making it easy for the players themselves to be able to personally contribute to the dice rolls in this way. Take it as an axiom that people don't trust anyone but themselves, and design the electronics accordingly, instead of trying to preach to people that they should trust a second- or third-party.

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