Re:Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
by krschultz on Tuesday October 12, 2010 @09:47AM
(#1783323)
Ok yes, if I give the robot the same exact pictures and random generator seeds, it is deterministic.
But in the field, even if it is stationary the pictures are never the same from frame to frame and everything relies on a lot a randomness, and random noise.
Simulators are almost a waste of time because the real challenge is handling that noise, NOT dealing with the information extracted after the noise. Once you have a clear view of the world, everything it is easy, it is getting the eyes to actually understand anything that is hard.
That's essentially the definition of deterministic. If your machine is powerful enough, you can even do it before the real one completes its operations. Anything deterministic is predictable in this manner.
That you can't predict it, or that you don't have a computer powerful enough to predict it has nothing to do with something not being deterministic, nor predictable. Even a massive, PRNG-influenced neural network is deterministic.
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On an aside for people who are thinking of quoting the halting problem at me:
The halting problem requires that the detector returns an answer, and it must be true or false and accurate, or the proof through paradox fails. Therefore, it cannot simulate the operation of what it's detecting, because there could be an infinite loop which would cause it to run without end. You also cannot merely abort it after a while, as that would be either a 3rd return state ("unknown") or an inaccurate response.