What Is Randomness?

What is randomness? Would you say luck or chance are the same thing? Do you believe that the universe in which you live, or as some philosophers suggest, that you are, is random?

I don't buy into the concept. Randomness is an cheap explanation for that which we do not yet understand.

Before I offer you some opinion and definitions of randomness forwarded by individuals more learned than myself, I will give you my view.

I have found that there is no such thing as randomness. It is a fabrication of perception–a relationship. An narrow interaction between the conscious self and its apparent surroundings.

If I have an experience or conduct an experiment, the results of which appear completely outside that which I ordinarily experience or expect, I call it random, luck, chance.

By the way, if we are to entertain “luck” as a genuine component of reality we might as well revert to living in the age of wizards and witches, strap potatoes to our heads to cure headaches, and wave burning sage around the house to protect ourselves from evil spirits.

It quite honestly baffles me to hear educated and learned people continue to refer to phenomena of experience, be it either termed good or bad, as luck.

I have no time for it.

Anyway, back to randomness.

In scientific terms, randomness is the “apparent” lack of pattern. It refers to unpredictability.

Randomness: The quality or state of lacking a pattern or principle of organization; unpredictability.

Oxford Lexico

Randomness In Everyday Terms

What we call random in every day terms is simply reflective of our inability to make a connection between a given phenomenon and our concept of reality.

In all our analysis, we are limited by the definitions of reality we put forward. Things that fall outside that definition are either rejected as irrelevant outliers or they the make such an impact that we are forced to reevaluate.

If we come to the conclusion, either by extensive scientific enquiry or everyday “common” sense, that this thing, this life, is the product of a random universe then we have simply failed to make a connection.

We have cashed in to early, we have counted your chickens too soon.

We have narrowed our focus to such an extent that we have merely a cross-section in our field of vision, a photograph, a fragment of the pulse, a snap-shot of reality.

There's much more going on. It's moving–never stationary.

Don't try to grab it, to fence it in, for if we do we miss the flow of it.

There is no entity, no big boss, no old man with a white beard playing dice with our lives. We make it all, both individually and collectively. It's perfectly in balance.

There's no figuring it out because it's far too complex. Every analysis misses too much. So let's just get on with it.

Random the universe is not, insofar as that random is assumed to unordered. Ordered, multifaceted, everywhere all at once, it is.

Oh, I was going to offer you everyone else's view on this but I won't, because this is The Daily Article–short and sweet.

Here's a few links instead;

Randomness: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
A Unified Theory of Randomness: Quant Magazine
Perceiving Randomness: Sean Carroll Physicist
Carlo Rovelli on Free Will, Determinism, Quantum Theory & Statistical Fluctuations