A new Shabbat-friendly technology, KosherSwitch, uses randomly timed light pulses to create various safeks, so that flipping the switch does not hallachically count as switching the light on, even in terms of gerama. The process is explained on their website.
Different people mean different things when they say "random numbers" in mathematics and in the sciences. Asking a person to choose a random number, for example, will give rise to a distribution of numbers with certain definite biases- for instance, humans are more likely to repeat numbers. A short analysis of random number generation appears here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generation
My question is whether anyone has written a definition of what the word "random" means in a hallachic context. I assume that a hallachic standard of randomness would be more lax than a standard of randomness in crytography, but I'm not sure just how lax. In particular, if somebody could write a computer programme to guess the pulse times with 99% accuracy, would that render KosherSwitch's patent non-Shabbat-safe?
Answer
I'd say if an average human, using an average human brain and eye, can't figure out the pattern, that's good enough.
Rabbi Asher Weiss discusses the criteria of "does an unaided human notice it?" with regards to triggering some change deep instead some semiconductor someplace that I'd never notice. He points out that I may not drag a heavy bench on shabbos that I know will dig a groove in the earth, but I am allowed to drag a lighter bench if there's reasonable doubt whether it will dig a groove. Wait!, asks Rabbi Weiss. What do you mean, reasonable doubt?! (The mass of this bench is far beyond the quantum threshold.) If you were an expert physicist and knew the exact mass, the coefficient of friction, the Young's modulus of the soil, and could calculate mgcos(θ) in your head, there would be no doubt!
The answer seems to be that we work with the average, unaided, human intellect and senses.
No comments:
Post a Comment