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Randomness.......really?
Topic: Randomness
by Stella, 2020 Cohort
“Randomness, Googled in September 2020, returns about 32,000,000 results in 0.48 seconds. If I were to ask what randomness is, one might say ‘a dice roll’ or ‘when I press shuffle on Spotify’ or potentially even ‘quantum particles’. The Google search returns a more palatable definition: the quality or state of lacking a pattern or principle of organization; unpredictability. But, what does this quality or state of unpredictability truly mean for our current search for knowledge?
With the context of chaos, uncertainty and unknown, randomness takes up the infinite space adjacent to unpredictability. So, while a dice roll or a shuffled song may seem random, once the causation has been explained to us, we no longer require randomness to define the concept.
For example, predicting what a dice will roll is extremely difficult, but not unpredictable. Researchers in Poland determined that by knowing the initial conditions- such as the viscosity of the air, the acceleration of gravity, and the friction of the table, it was possible to predict the outcome. Now made predictable, die rolls are less random,
Spotify’s shuffle also seems like randomness to us. This is until we know that Spotify used an algorithm to pseudo-randomly shuffle songs, but after receiving negative feedback from users, they de-randomized the algorithm. It was less ‘pseudo-random’ but seemed more random to our minds. Our innate human drive to understand through observing patterns, meant the algorithmic randomness of the same song being played twice was ‘less random’ to our minds. The repetition of songs was not ‘unpredictable’ enough.
So, if randomness is unpredictability, does true randomness exist?
The core assumption arguing that it does not exist, is the assumption that everything is caused. If we had the resources to know/measure all the conditions for an outcome, it would be completely known, predictable and certain. The idea holds that everything has conditions and properties, just waiting for human intervention, to be measured and known.
If this assumption is correct, then potentially, randomness is a perception, an initial state to prompt learning. Things have perceptual randomness until we uncover the unknowns, decipher the uncertainties or measure the unpredictability. As Nassim Taleb (Fooled by Randomness) touches on, past events will always look less random than they were (it is called the hindsight bias).
In mathematics, the law of large numbers is a theory created to describe the predictability of randomness, as an average of repeated, random, individual outcomes. The more we observe repetitions of a random something, the more able we are to explain outcomes in aggregate absolutes. Random walks are another example of this, (see the gif or the primer topic). True randomness doesn’t exist simply, as unpredictability.
The idea that our pattern-finding minds struggle with the existence of ‘a quality or state, lacking patterns or principles of organization’, is logical, but is it true? Maybe it’s up to you to decide if you want to allow the awe of randomness to inspire or dictate your learning process. Instead of ‘it can’t be random’ try, ‘was that random?’.
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Disclaimer#
This content has been contributed by a student as part of a learning activity.
If there are inaccuracies, or opportunities for significant improvement on this topic, feedback is welcome on how to improve the resource.
You can improve articles on this topic as a student in "Unravelling Complexity", or by including the amendments in an email to: Chris.Browne@anu.edu.au
“Randomness, Googled in September 2020, returns about 32,000,000 results in 0.48 seconds. If I were to ask what randomness is, one might say ‘a dice roll’ or ‘when I press shuffle on Spotify’ or potentially even ‘quantum particles’. The Google search returns a more palatable definition: the quality or state of lacking a pattern or principle of organization; unpredictability. But, what does this quality or state of unpredictability truly mean for our current search for knowledge?
With the context of chaos, uncertainty and unknown, randomness takes up the infinite space adjacent to unpredictability. So, while a dice roll or a shuffled song may seem random, once the causation has been explained to us, we no longer require randomness to define the concept.
For example, predicting what a dice will roll is extremely difficult, but not unpredictable. Researchers in Poland determined that by knowing the initial conditions- such as the viscosity of the air, the acceleration of gravity, and the friction of the table, it was possible to predict the outcome. Now made predictable, die rolls are less random,
Spotify’s shuffle also seems like randomness to us. This is until we know that Spotify used an algorithm to pseudo-randomly shuffle songs, but after receiving negative feedback from users, they de-randomized the algorithm. It was less ‘pseudo-random’ but seemed more random to our minds. Our innate human drive to understand through observing patterns, meant the algorithmic randomness of the same song being played twice was ‘less random’ to our minds. The repetition of songs was not ‘unpredictable’ enough.
So, if randomness is unpredictability, does true randomness exist?
The core assumption arguing that it does not exist, is the assumption that everything is caused. If we had the resources to know/measure all the conditions for an outcome, it would be completely known, predictable and certain. The idea holds that everything has conditions and properties, just waiting for human intervention, to be measured and known.
If this assumption is correct, then potentially, randomness is a perception, an initial state to prompt learning. Things have perceptual randomness until we uncover the unknowns, decipher the uncertainties or measure the unpredictability. As Nassim Taleb (Fooled by Randomness) touches on, past events will always look less random than they were (it is called the hindsight bias).
In mathematics, the law of large numbers is a theory created to describe the predictability of randomness, as an average of repeated, random, individual outcomes. The more we observe repetitions of a random something, the more able we are to explain outcomes in aggregate absolutes. Random walks are another example of this, (see the gif or the primer topic). True randomness doesn’t exist simply, as unpredictability.
The idea that our pattern-finding minds struggle with the existence of ‘a quality or state, lacking patterns or principles of organization’, is logical, but is it true? Maybe it’s up to you to decide if you want to allow the awe of randomness to inspire or dictate your learning process. Instead of ‘it can’t be random’ try, ‘was that random?’.