The Information (51 page)

Ignorance is subjective. It is a quality of the observer. Presumably randomness—if it exists at all—should be a quality of the thing itself. Leaving humans out of the picture, one would like to say that an event, a choice, a distribution, a game, or, most simply, a number is random.

The notion of a random number is full of difficulties. Can there be such thing as a
particular
random number; a
certain
random number? This number is arguably random: