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The point is that if you run the simulation with seed X, you'll get the same results I do. This means that all you need to reproduce my results is the code and any inputs like the seed, rather than the entire execution history. If you want to provide different inputs and get the same result, that's another matter entirely (where numerical stability will be much more important).

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thaumasiotes 12 hours ago | parent [-]

But what is the value of reproducing your results that way? Those results only mean anything if they're similar to what happens with other seeds.

	▲	dzaima 9 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If everything goes roughly the same with all seeds, then everything's indeed just fine. If not, I have a paper trail that I did in fact actually encounter the unexpected thing instead of just making up results. (indeed a seed could be cherry-picked, but the more is computed from the seed, the more infeasible that gets) And that hints at the possibility of using seeds specifically for noting rare occurrences - communicating weird/unexpected(/buggy?) examples to collaborators, running for X hours to gather statistics without having to store all intermediate states of every single attempt if you later want to do extra analysis for cases insufficiently analyzed by the existing code, etc.
	▲	saagarjha 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If something fails, I can reproduce the failure with your seed.