By davidjchalmers

David Chalmers is Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University, is author of "The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory", and is occasionally conscious. This piece was first published on the newsgroup sci.math in 1990, and can be found on his website.

PICK A NUMBER BETWEEN ZERO AND INFINITY…

From: dave@cogsci.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) Newsgroups: sci.math,sci.math.num-analysis Subject: Re: call for votes: most & least boring numbers Date: 17 Jan 90 20:40:02 GMT In article <18311.25b44848@merrimack.edu> ain14924@merrimack.edu writes: “Reminds me of a friend of mine who claims that the number 17 is “the most random” number. His proof ran as follows: pick a number. It’s not really as good a random number as 17, is it? (Invariable Answer: “Umm, well, no…”)” This reminds me of a little experiment I did a couple of years ago. I stood on a busy street-corner in Oxford, and asked passers-by to “name a random number…