This might just be my computer-focused life talking

I’m a software eng too, but I have broad interests. Like I said, the philosophic use doesn’t really have a place in this discussion and I messed up by bringing it in. The only way it would be relevant is if the universe is a simulation because, as you guessed, then free will itself becomes part of the equation.

I also don’t know why predictability would be solely based on the numbers that came before

There’s a miscommunication happening here, and I’m wondering if I’m not explaining myself well. Election predictions use polling as their dataset, and there are no calculations that really go into predicting the results other than comparing the numbers within those sets. That’s why they’re notoriously garbage (every single pollster had Hillary winning in late October 2016, for example). Also, there aren’t any calculations that go into a CEO/Boardroom’s intuitions on how shareholders will react to policy changes, so I’m not sure about the relevance here. In the case of pi, there is no dataset that you can use that tells you what the next unknown number in pi is. The only way to get that number is to run a very complex calculation. Calculations are not predictions.

As I said, you can’t predict the next number simply based upon the set of numbers that came before. You have to calculate it, and that calculation can be so complex that it takes insane amounts of energy to do it.

Also, I think I was thinking of the philisophical definition of “deterministic” when I was using it earlier. That doesn’t really apply to pi… unless we really do live in a simulation.

There’s no way to predict what the next unsolved pi digit will be just by looking at what came before it. It’s neither predictable nor deterministic. The very existence of calculations to get the next digit supports that.

Note: I’m not saying Pi is random. Again, the calculations support the general non-randomness of it. It is possible to be unpredictable, undeterministic, and completely logical.

Note Note: I don’t know everything. For all I know, we’re in a simulation and we’ll eventually hit the floating point limit of pi and underflow the universe. I just wanted to point out that your example doesn’t quite fit with pi.

Yeah, but your number doesn’t fit pi. It may not have a pattern, but it’s predictable and deterministic.