15th Dec 09

Was walk­ing out to lunch with the 2 interns, R & E. We usu­ally have techie con­ver­sa­tions, with today’s con­ver­sa­tion touch­ing on pro­gram­ming (E hav­ing just coded a small appli­ca­tion). A few days ago E won­dered how computers/applications cal­cu­lated ran­dom­ness. I posited that it should be quite sim­ple (hav­ing learnt a bit about it before); some of the ways:

1. To include a cer­tain per­cent­age in which a cer­tain event happened.
2. In RPG games, a cer­tain ratio was assigned to each tile your char­ac­ter stood on, deter­min­ing whether you would ‘ran­domly’ face an enemy. The ratios in each tile changed every sec­ond or so, so it was rather time-dependant.
3. The use of the math.random func­tion, as in lan­guages like Java.

E debated that even with per­cent­ages and ratios, it’s not really ran­dom. The pro­gram­mer still pre­as­signs cer­tain ranges of val­ues. And we really didn’t know how the math.random func­tion worked. “How does the com­puter know how to gen­er­ate ran­dom num­bers, even with the math.random func­tion?”, he exclaimed.

Flash back to today.

Hav­ing researched on ran­dom­ness, E revis­ited the topic. What we thought to be ran­dom, was not ran­dom at all. Obvi­ously human beings could come up with ran­dom num­bers, but com­put­ers, although hav­ing arti­fi­cial ‘intel­li­gence’ would have to base that ran­dom­ness on some­thing. It turns out that cer­tain computers/applications base it on a long string-ed num­ber. E.g some­thing like 2348923048902348902348909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909023481394891057
1907591375901759017219830123893284902384890849084902384902384908329048390284092384903284902384902384902
3849238401849018490389014890134890384290489008.…

You get the idea. It’s a fixed, pre-determined long of dig­its. And I guess the appli­ca­tion will pick a cer­tain por­tion of that num­ber at a cer­tain point in time to work with and gen­er­ate that ran­dom number.

But my main point today is not about com­puter pro­gram­ming. E’s next state­ment is the main focus of today’s topic. He said that even what­ever hap­pens in life is not ran­dom. There’s cause and effect. As seen in com­puter pro­gram­ming, ran­dom events or num­bers are not really ran­dom. There’s some­thing out there that decides, causes things to hap­pen. It’s quite heart­en­ing to hear that from a pre-believer.

So I call out to my broth­ers & sis­ters who already believe. What­ever hap­pens in your life… know. Know that noth­ing hap­pens by chance. They can be caused by your own, and oth­ers’ actions. Know that Our Father, the great pro­gram­mer of life, is in con­trol. I quote from one of my older blogs(25 Dec 2005!):

“God is the cre­ator. There­fore He knows all the vari­ables. He knows all the pos­si­ble per­mu­ta­tions and com­bi­na­tions which will lead to the ful­fill­ment of His per­fect plan.

So we might see things as being bad, or we ques­tion why cer­tain things have to hap­pen. Through my cur­rent walk with Christ, I have realised that God allows cer­tain things to hap­pen. When you’re ‘in it’; i.e the ‘sit­u­a­tion’. You won’t be able to see why it hap­pens. But one day God will let you see why it hap­pens. Be it 1 month after, or years after. But only then will you acknowl­edge that, ‘Yes, God has every­thing in con­trol’. And He is able to use our mis­takes and fail­ures for His glory.”

I end this entry by say­ing that for God to make the best out of it, we must desire to be obe­di­ent to Him, to be set apart. Oh what boun­ti­ful bless­ings flow from the grace of God when we are right with Him!