Why is it so hard for people to believe in randomness?

Events that are outside our control and randomness are two entirely different things. Perhaps those “random” mutations are really the result of the particular set of circumstances (a deterministic point of view). That still allows it to be outside of our control – and I think you’ll have a hard time denying there are things outside of our control (e.g. a Christian who believes in God has to admit that God’s actions are outside of his control).

People tend to associate anything that isn’t determined or guided with chaos or complete disorder. Just because evolution doesn’t have a guiding hand, that doesn’t mean that it’s completely random or chaotic.

I don’t believe evolution is random, but one of the biggest arguments I have come across against it is that they believe it is random, and therefore cannot exist.

Just to add some clarification, the process of evolution is not completely random. It is guided by natural selection. The introduction of new traits certainly is in part random (random mutations), however the long term adoption of positive traits is not random at all but has science behind it. When the two theories are combined, it becomes a bit more easy to understand how life randomly began and continued from that point, resulting in all the creatures we see today (and those we know existed in the past).

As to why people find it hard to believe in randomness, I suppose part of it stems from acknowledging the bleak chaos of it all, and then coming to terms with the feelings this creates. If you figure out that there really is no purpose to life, it can become disheartening and scary if you have been raised to believe otherwise.

We’ve all gotta find some sort of pattern in everything. This is especially true (and recognizable) if you’ve ever been under the influence of hallucinogens (or so I’ve heard). So it is difficult, when your brain insists on mapping everything into a congruous, sensible format… to truly realize a concept of total randomness.

Belief in randomness, however is more of a simple matter. True randomness is pretty hard to come by, even for something like a computer (which we typically presume to be the most capable of randomness). In truth, it is not easy to create such randomness in a computer…after all, it is a computer program right? Take RNG’s for example (Random Number Generators). Just about every single one will have some weird algorithm that it pulls from something in the world that is naturally random.

So it seems like the only place we’ll find something that’s really, actually truly random is in the unpredictable change and future in nature. Well, in nature AND in the Heart of Gold Improbability Drive.

I won’t touch anything about evolution, as several have covered it better than I can already, but as for karma, and other things, it is simple. Humans are pattern seeking animals. We seek order from disorder. To find out why something happens is our question, unfortunately, the answer might fit the question, but not be correct. Example – Q: Where does lightning come from? A: A great big guy with a beard and bitch for a wife that lives on Mt. Olympus throws thunderbolts around because that’s what gods do. It’s a fitting answer, it satisfied the ancient Greeks, and it was pretty much a harmless belief. Completely fucking wrong, as we discovered many thousands of years later, but an answer nonetheless. It solved the whole needing an answer to an otherwise unknowable question.

This process can be applied to pretty much any spiritual based answer to natural world questions. A world without answers (even wrong answers) is pretty damn bleak. Some would say meaningless, even.

People often have a hard time accepting that randomness is a concept that don’t really exist. Astronomical numbers and unlikely events make us think so. Not even a computer can create a true random number, kind of what @gambitking said. Low probability events often seem random.

Randomness, is a concept created by us humans to describe seemingly chaotic chain of events which are to complex for the individual human to comprehend.

@Vincentt mentioned “result of the particular set of circumstances” out of deterministic point of view. I agree.

However, even though our universe is deterministic, we need concepts like randomness to describe things we don’t understand. But it’s important also to remember that a concept like randomness is rather a description of our inability, than something real.

It’s a common misconception that the concept of evolution has anything to do with randomness. @dynamicduo mentioned natural selection, which only can be applied to abiogenesis when we fully understand one or more way of how life can start.

@gambitking Yes, the Heart of Gold Impobability Drive, he he. I do prefer the Italian Bistro though.

As @gambitking and @evelyns_pet_zebra said, humans are pattern-seeking animals. I believe we see what we believe to be patterns and then communicate what we believe we understand using the narrative format. Stories require things to be tied together, so we tie events together in order to make sense out of them.

Narratives generally describe a causal series of events. They have to, or else we can’t tell a story. Random events placed side by side make no sense. So we eliminate the nonsense elements, and stitch the rest together as a story tracing a series of events, and inferring there is a causal link between them.

As a result, we are used to thinking in terms of stories, which typically follow a timeline. In stories, events are causes of subsequent events. The two events are close to each other in space and time. We get used to the pattern, and so when events happen close to each other in space and time, we are prejudiced towards believing they are linked causally.

Determinists are a special example of this prejudice. They believe that all events are related to events that preceded them in a causal fashion. I find it interesting that you can link events causally after the fact, but you can’t predict them before they happen. Part of the problem with prediction is that we don’t have complete models, and we don’t have a complete understanding of the way all things are related to the things around them. Another part is that the universe is probabilistic. The same actions do not result from the same stimuli all the time. Sometimes it goes one way, at other times, another way, all things being equal. We have unexplained variation, and we always will.

Even if our model was perfect (we would have to be the universe for that to be true), there would still be uncertainty in the relationship between events due to quantum fluctuation. Randomness pervades the universe at all levels of analysis. And yet, we humans tell everything as a story because it gives us an evolutionary advantage to do so. We can predict some things, and stories do illustrate real relationships between one event and the next. It’s just that even when there is no relationship, we still tell the story as if there was such a relationship.

@oratio – how do you know for sure the universe is deterministic? I’ve always been curious about that…

<3 Heart of Gold. I liked that better than the Italian bistro, to be honest ;-)

@daloon
Very true. Good comment. We will probably never be able to prove everything as random or not. Physical laws as we know them can’t explain what happens at micro particle levels, and how can you explain what is not random if you can’t predict events. You are right. As long as we have uncertainty, we can’t say for sure.

But as long as we are talking about randomness on the levels of individual human understanding of events, randomness is something perceived. If we don’t know about and understand the events that brings forth a new event, we are surprised and perceive it as random.

@Vincentt
You are right. I can only talk about facts as I see them. Even if I know something to be true, it can be concluded on false preconceptions. I should be more humble when I express my conclusions, as they are just that.

I don’t know for sure that the universe is deterministic. I however, have hard time finding events that doesn’t need previous conditions to be true. I see it as all actions are events that depend on other events, and in the rhythmic beat of actions and reactions in these complex chains of events in a universe, certain events has to be. Life itself is one of those things.

That given, I don’t understand what would bring the Higg’s Boson into existence if it exists. I don’t understand the preconditions. Maybe it’s just random.

this is why I love Fluther, so many bright minds, explaining things I want to understand, and I learn something new in the process. GAs all around.

I don’t know.

3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510 58209 74944 59230 78164 06286 20899 86280 34825 34211 70679…

@Blondesjon a better number for this Q would be 1.6180339887 :P

@uberbatman…How are Fibonacci’s Fucking Rabbits any more random than pi?

@Blondesjon thats the point. They arent. Nothing is random. We just havent found the pattern for pi yet. Fibonaccis fucking rabbits relate because they are everywhere in nature in these things that are seemingly random.

@uberbatman…I didn’t mean fucking in a snarky way. I meant it literally (that’s premise of the sequence). I did a project once on phi and the Golden Rectangle as it applies to advertising.

i guess i was thrown by your use of the word “better”

@Blondesjon i knew exactly what you meant :)
they’re rabbits, they fuck A LOT. 11235813….....

@uberbatman…and they make sunflowers and seashells pretty :)