I’ve been posting a lot lately, because the comments from the previous posts engage my mind :-). If you haven’t visited the blog in a few days, be sure to check out the previous posts. I’m moving somewhat fast.

Why do we love this idea of randomness? Why are we attached to it?

I was sitting and thinking about this question, and the solution popped into my head. In hindsight, it’s actually pretty obvious, and it’s spelled out very clearly in the movie “The Secret” (which I’ve seen a few times, Joe :-P). The way the solution popped into my head is pretty funny though… I was getting bored with the question of why people love randomness (because I couldn’t answer it), so I decided to start an entirely new and unrelated line of questioning. I asked myself what my most offensive belief was. I answered that karma and cause and effect is a pretty offensive belief. Then the solution to my previous question about randomness hit me.

The reason we love this idea of randomness is because we use it 99% of the time when something bad happens.

One of the biggest problems in all religions is answering the question of: why do bad things happen to good people? This is a very hard question. Small bad things can be reasoned away, but then you see extremely bad things, like child molestation, rape, or natural disasters that kill millions of people… and in religion, people are forced to ask themselves: if God is a good God, then why would he allow this to happen? Big problem for religion.

What do we do? I believe that while we all have our own religious beliefs, and we all will answer why bad things happen to good people differently - I believe that in our hearts, most of us will rely on this idea of randomness. Some of the really bad things in this world don’t have a good explanation, no matter how much faith we have. So at some point, in our conscious or subconscious mind, we latch onto the idea that sometimes random shit happens.

But now look at what we’ve done. We’ve attached the idea that randomness exists to the most emotionally charged experiences we can think of. That means we really need this idea of randomness. If randomness were to leave the picture, then we would have to deal with all these highly emotional issues again. Our subconscious mind does not want this.

For example, when I was a little kid, my aunt died from cancer. I think she was in her 30’s. I must have been 8 years old, and at such a young age, I had to deal with this extremely emotional situation. I barely understand death as it is, and now my aunt is gone. I ask my parents why she died, but they can’t give a solid explanation. Maybe I hear that it was “her time”, and that “God decided to take her”. Those are great ideas… but what sinks into the subconscious mind? What is the belief I form in my heart?

Probably that random shit happens. Now I’m 24, and I’m challenging this belief. Which means I have to re-live my aunt’s death, and try to make sense of it again. I also have to re-live everything else where I’ve used randomness as the explanation. Talk about exhausting!

I think we all latch onto this idea of randomness because we’ve all had bad experiences. No one lives a perfect life. Everyone has family members who have died, or friends, or teachers. My 6th grade teacher died when I was 13 years old - he was a volunteer firefighter, and was responding to a call, and a tree fell on his car with him in it. How do I explain that to myself? It seems the only way I can live in peace is to use this idea of randomness.

If you don’t like my theories on randomness, or even if you do, I submit to you an exercise: ask yourself, “What would it mean, emotionally, if randomness didn’t exist?” - you can start by finishing this sentence: “If randomness didn’t exist, then _______”. Don’t give a one sentence answer either :-P. Chances are that blank should be a few pages long. (No need to post your response in the comments :-P).

This is a continuation of ideas from my last post on randomness…

Let’s assume you look at someone winning the lottery twice, and you have the same reaction that I do: there’s no way our current model correctly predicts it happening. Now I notice a lot of people in the previous post don’t have that reaction :-P. I’ll attempt to address people’s complaints, but also move along at the same time.

There are a few problems that spring up if we say that randomness doesn’t exist. The idea of randomness is essential to the field of probability and statistics. It’s also essential to Quantum Physics, where matter phases out into a “probability-cloud” that acts as a wave-form when not being observed. Mad Hatter made the observation that if randomness doesn’t exist, then reality is deterministic - and we have no free will.

There is a solution to these problems though. What if, where we perceive randomness, what actually exists is a conscious choice?

Probability and statistics are still useful. They just model choice instead of random behavior. Quantum Physics is still correct - but it just means that when matter phases out of existence, it just hasn’t chosen where to exist yet. And free will still exists, because everything is now free will!

So my current understanding is that, where we perceive randomness, what we’re really perceiving is a choice that we don’t understand completely.

Think of a hypothetical situation: imagine that I’m paralyzed, and all I can control is my blinking. Now imagine that you come to see me, and you are absolutely convinced that I’m a machine. You believe you are looking at a complicated clock. Perhaps I try to communicate with you by blinking letters of the alphabet… maybe using morse code. I painstakingly spell out “Hey Jimmy, how’s the wife and kids?” What do you perceive?

You will see me blinking, but you’ll think it’s just random movement. You can watch my blinking, and figure out the “probability” that I’ll blink or not. You might declare that “This machine has a 0.476 chance of blinking at any given second” - and that might true. But because of your belief that my blinking is inherently random, you miss the message.

A strange analogy… but that’s what I think is happening. We witness seemingly random events, and sure - we can calculate the odds of that event happening, and we can study it, and analyze it, and make great models. But so long as we believe that the event itself is inherently random - we are stuck. If randomness exists, then that means events are meaningless.

If we replace the idea of randomness with conscious choice, then everything has meaning. Things fall into place.

Perhaps you disagree with me :-P. Or perhaps you think it’s interesting, but haven’t made up your mind. Either way, that’s fine. This is only my current understanding - there’s a good chance the more I think about it, the more this will change as well :-P.

“God does not play dice with the universe.” - Albert Einstein

I will explain my ideas on why I believe randomness doesn’t truly exist. I believe I can win the lottery using these ideas.

The first thing to understand is what society’s current beliefs are about randomness.

One of the first things you might think about, is that when you play video games on your computer, there is obviously some random stuff going on. Sometimes an enemy turns left, sometimes he turns right - completely random. You might even know some things about programming, and know of functions to call when you want a random number.

All these random numbers on computers aren’t truly random though - they are pseudo-random numbers. What that means is that usually some number is taken from the outside world - for example, the time it takes you to click on the “New Game” button in milliseconds - or the time of day you run the program in milliseconds - and that number is treated as the “seed”. From this seed number, the computer can generate a sequence of numbers that appear to be random. All it does is perform some math on the seed number, and spit out the result for you. Then change the seed number (according to a formula), so the next time you want a random number, it has a new result.

You don’t have to understand the exact formulas. If you’re curious you can do some more research on pseudo-random numbers, and random number generation. It’s a large field in computer science. The important part to understand is that these “random” numbers on computers aren’t actually random. They are calculated from some seed, based on formulas. Not random.

So randomness doesn’t exist on a computer. But surely randomness exists in reality?! You might argue, for example, what about flipping a coin? What about rolling dice? These events are truly random.

Well, on the surface they sure do seem like it. After all - how many of us can predict 100 dice rolls in a row? No one. So it does seem like that is a random system. However, there is a problem.

The problem comes in when we research how many people have won the lottery twice. Google, Video, Couple, Family, PA, NY Deli, etc, etc…

Now of course there are skeptics on the issue, claiming that with so many people playing, surely there will be some people who win twice. For those with some common sense, reading the skeptic side of things is actually pretty hilarious - they claim: “the odds of someone winning the lottery twice to be something like 1 in 30 for a four month period and better than even odds over a seven year period. Why? Because players don’t buy one ticket for each of two lotteries, they buy multiple tickets every week” - wow. Then how come everyone doesn’t win twice? All they have to do is play 40 times ;-). An absolutely ridiculous article, especially for those that understand statistics and probability at a high-school level.

The truth is that our current understanding of reality can NOT explain how people win the lottery twice.

So, we have to do what’s right. We have to be honest with ourselves. Probability and statistics are models for reality. The models work pretty good most of the time, but when we look at people who win the lottery twice, we notice that our model is incorrect. If our model is mostly correct, but has some incorrect moments, then what do we do? Modify the model. Clearly our model isn’t completely accurate. So we modify it. We DO NOT spatter off nonsense to try and convince ourselves that our model must be correct, and that reality is just being rude for not following our laws. We take an honest and humble look at it and say: Well gee, we’re a little bit off, how can we make a more accurate model?

Think about it. Study probability and statistics a little bit. Try to digest the odds of someone winning twice. In this article we’re told the odds are 419 million to one. That would mean the winner would have to play the lottery every minute - for 796 years - to accomplish this using our current model. Now you see how impossible this really is with our current model.

Think about it. I’ll post more on it later.

Something I’ve been keeping my eye on for a while is Steorn.com. It’s an engineering company in Ireland, that claims to have discovered how to make a perpetual motion device. Now, of course that breaks the laws of physics :-). Nonetheless, they seem to be legit (or … at least more legit than your backyard mad scientist :-P).

They haven’t said how their technology works exactly yet - only that it is based on having magnets in a circle, and pushing an object around the circle using the magnets. They understand that people will be skeptic, so they have devised a way to prove it works — a long time ago, they took out an advertisement in a popular magazine, inviting scientists to debunk their device. The only catch is: if the device works, the scientists have to publicly state it works. Steorn had over 5000 applicants, and out of them, whittled the list down to 22 scientists with both the free time and academic background to properly investigate their device.

Pretty cool stuff! We’ll have to wait and see if it’s a hoax of some sort :-). If it is a hoax, Steorn has done an amazing job at fooling a lot of people. Check out this page on their website with two videos explaining the entire thing - and this page with their most recent video from April 13, 2007 (or you can just search YouTube).