[Cryptography] TRNGs as open source design semiconductors

[Jon Callas]

> On Sep 13, 2019, at 4:25 PM, Ray Dillinger <bear at sonic.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> The concepts of "randomness" and "entropy" as qualities of numbers,
> independent of any attacker, are in fact problematic, and contribute to
> some faint and fuzzy thinking. 

Hear, hear. I use the word "unguessable," myself. I also repeat the apocryphal story that Von Neumann told Shannon to use the word entropy because no one knows what it means. Even if made up, it illustrates the problematic, faint, fuzzy thinking that we end up with because we don't have formal definitions.

Statistics itself has a lot of weirdness in it that alone will lead someone down a rathole of paradoxes and confusion. Let alone when you try to think about "entropy" or whatever else we want to call it.

A couple of weeks ago, The New Yorker had an article about statistics, Big Data, medical safety, and serial killers. As I was reading it, I thought it was valuable to this conversation:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/09/what-statistics-can-and-cant-tell-us-about-ourselves

	Jon