Cycles are the signature of state-determined behavior. When we see a system in a cycle, we suspect it may be at present uninfluenced by external factors. Of course, it many be influenced by a cyclic external factor, or by an external factor that is too small to break the cycle...
The closed-system fiction is thus a useful heuristic device. If we see non-cyclic behavior, we look for an input. If, on the other hand, we asserted that the system is closed, but "random." we would be saying there is no use looking for any additional input. Many scientists are reluctant to admit a system is open, so sometimes it does pay to talk about randomness as a labor saving, or face-saving device. That way we do not have to admit that our view is incomplete or explain why we are not looking for inputs.
bryan said: @7W5, I can't quite suss out your meaning. As jacob mentioned, computers are designed to convert analog physics to digital logic and are finite state machines where you would usually be looking at ~0.5ns for state changes, not that that really means anything to a human.. your resolution would depend on other perspectives (like who is the one really doing the canonical state-keeping for the particular system you are interested in: the CPU, the memory, the hard drive, the game software, the computer's monitor, your brain, some other thing out over the internet?). All systems are distributed systems if you zoom in enough (or no systems are distributed if you zoom out enough..)..
I am not completely computer-illiterate. I owned a VIC 20 with a cassette tape drive which I programmed in BASIC in 1982, took first course in Fortran in 84, first course in Pascal in 89, and tiny course in Javascript last year. Since the Weinberg book was originally written in 1975, some of the examples offered would likely seem archaic to a young, modern reader. For me, they were sort of causative of a trip down memory lane.
So, as I was reading the book, I was referencing experiences with my VIC 20 and the old school pinball style video machines that filled a room of the ice cream parlor where I was employed in 1982. I hated the video game machines because when to parlor was empty, they would play terrible snatches of inane electronic theme music in predictable cycles. The one themed on the band Journey was particularly unbearable.
I had a sister who was only 7 in 1982, so she loved to visit me at my part-time job and play video games and eat ice cream for free. So, I wrote a game for her on my VIC 20 which was entitled Gypsy Fortune Teller. It seemed like magic to her 7 year old brain, because it would offer random, reasonably sensible answers to any question she typed in. Of course, any reasonably intelligent adult could have figured out what was going on pretty quickly because I doubt I included more than a dozen options for IF "How.." or IF "Why..." or "ELSE..", YET that adult would still have been unable to predict (except in terms of statistics after large number of repeated trials)answer to next question typed, BECAUSE I had purposefully chosen to model an open system by including RANDOM function.
As you noted, a computer is a finite state machine, only some of which could be perceptible to a human, and any program would tend towards further limiting the number of perceptible states. So, I guess what I was really attempting to ask was something like what is the longest possible cycle of states perceptible to a human being a modern computer could generate given no use of any form of RANDOM function/entropy-collector, but inclusive of limited range of input from operator? But, then I realized that was the equivalent of asking something like how much data is stored/available in memory? I couldn't store even the shortest Strawberry Shortcake cartoon on my cassette drive for the purposes of entertaining my sister in 1982, but now...?
but I guess this can serve as a small warning to those of us who are not blessed with above average intelligence.
