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Five Kinds of Nondeterminism


Or four kinds, or six kinds, I'm not picky about how you count them

Most of the time computer randomness is actually pseudorandom, meaning we seed a deterministic algorithm that behaves "randomly-enough" for some use. (One intrusive thought I sometimes have: any "yes/no" dialogue actually has three outcomes: yes, no, or the user getting up and walking away without picking a choice, permanently stalling the execution.) Nondeterministic abstraction gives us the potential to pick the worst-case scenario for our system, so we can prove it's robust even under those conditions.

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