44 Are the Androids Dreaming Yet? these simple building blocks the computer allows us to play computer games or process the words of this book as I write. Importantly, all these operations are deterministic; given a set of inputs the computer will always generate the same outputs and that means a computer has no free will. “Ah,” I hear you say, “but my computer plays games with me and is not predictable, otherwise I would always beat it” You are right, but the computer has a clever trick to fake non-deterministic behavior: it uses you! Computers on their own cannot generate random numbers. All a computer can do is generate a pseudo-random number and it does this by working its way through a very long calculation. It could, for example, calculate the first thousand digits of n (pi), and then start using the subsequent digits as random numbers. ‘The digits look jumbled up but we know they follow an entirely predictable pattern. The computer appears to behave randomly because when I press the button to kill an alien the computer picks the number it had counted up to at that moment, say the 55,678" digit of 1, and uses that. It is I, the human, who unconsciously picks the precise moment in time and therefore provides the random element. My choice is governed by all sorts of extraneous quantum influences: Did I have coffee this morning? Was it a big mug or a small cup? How hot was it? All these things will be important as they determine the amount of caffeine absorbed across the brain blood barrier and the exact timing of my actions. Humans are not good at consciously generating random numbers. We tend to choose the same numbers too often. If I ask you to pick a number between one and ten, you are likely to choose three or seven. This effect is called social stereotyping; magicians often use it when they pretend to read your mind. The problem arises because we tend to over think the problem. I asked you to pick a random number between one and ten. You won't pick one