The Randomness Machine
Imagine a “randomness machine” that makes random changes to the world each time a button is pressed and is of unlimited power though the magnitude of each change is also random. Perhaps the first time it is activated, a glass of water on a bedside table in Mexico turns green. The second time, a dog walking down a London street barks for no reason. The third time (since the changes are truly random) nothing changes. It is also possible that some changes would be vast but undetectable: The fifth time the button is pressed, for instance, the location of France may be changed together with a corresponding and instantaneous emendation to all existing cartography, human memory and media so that no one even notices; while the sixth time the button is pressed, France may be restored to its original location but, as a result of the fifth change, everyone will believe that the machine has imposed an outrageous incongruity upon the face of Europe. The machine, of course, is also a potential Doomsday Device. The seventh time the bottom is pressed the entire planet (including, problematically, the machine itself) may disappear or be converted into a compact sphere of car tyres. Or perhaps all that will happen is that the never-to-be-discovered word courtesan will be interpolated at random into the copyright boilerplate of a paperback edition of Hamlet in a bookstore in East Kilbride.
The most interesting thing about this hypothetical machine is that, if it were ever built, it would be impossible to prove that it was not working. |