Why do we believe in patterns and not randomness?
Sam episodes #1
One evening, Sameera and Saali walked into a cafe. I was already in and waiting for them to join. We ordered the usual Latte and sat in a corner as it was unusually crowded that day. I noticed Sam had been thinking about something since we started walking from our Work-from-home office. I mean, my bedroom. She was quiet and left behind. First, I thought it was stress from work. She’s not talkative, but I can tell when she’s in deep thought.
The barista had only given us two sachets of sugar. She usually prefers her regular-sized Latte with three sachets, but she’s too shy to ask for more. So she opened the sachets and poured sugar into her coffee, convincing herself that it wouldn’t taste terrible. She watched as it slowly dissolved.
“So… what’s up?” Saali asked, interrupting her chain of thoughts.
She looked up and suddenly realized we were noticing her. “I was just thinking something,” she said, stirring her coffee. She thought that was the end of her answer until she saw us looking for more. “I was thinking about randomness,” she said. “Like, what is truly random?”
“What do you mean?” Saali sighed, “like, tossing a coin?” taking a sip of coffee.
“Tossing a coin isn’t random,” she said, as though she had anticipated it. “It is difficult to predict. But it’s not truly random.”
“If you know the angular momentum of the coin, atmospheric pressure, wind speed, and direction, you can determine its outcome,” she explained.
“With a considerable amount of accuracy. It still has some randomness to it, though,” I added. Sam didn’t seem convinced. She argued that if it is possible to predict the outcome with a probability greater than fifty percent, then it is not truly random.
“I guess you could argue the same about everything,” he said to her.
A typical coffee evening with the two, sipping slowly, pondering nature’s mysteries.
“How does the random shuffle on a music player work?” Saali asked. “It seems pretty random to me.”
“Computers have no imagination whatsoever, so it is physically impossible for computers to come up with a truly random number,” she said. “They rely on some complex algorithms to produce pseudo-random numbers, which are difficult to predict but are not.”
At times, I felt like the shuffle in my music player repeated a few songs more often than others. Once, to test this hypothesis, I wrote a piece of code to generate random numbers from a sufficiently large sample size. I still found that it repeated a few numbers more often. It is also possible that I was trying to determine patterns in the cloud. That’s the thing about random numbers: we can never be sure. Three consecutive heads do not mean that the other three tosses must land on tails. It is arbitrary as long as we can’t predict the outcome. It does not have to follow any pattern. If it does, then it isn’t random.
But the universe tends to follow the law of averages. It states that future events are likely to turn out so that they balance any past deviation from a presumed mean. That is, if you flip the coin, like, many, many times, the law of averages says that it will land on heads about half the time and tails about half the time. So even though one flip might not be exactly fifty percent, if you do it many times, it will average out to be fifty percent. The catch is we don’t know how many are many, many.
“It is difficult even for humans to think of a completely random number,” I said. “This is because our thoughts and behaviors are influenced by our experiences, biases, and patterns of thinking, which can affect the numbers that we come up with.”
Sam took a sip leaving tiny pieces of sugar at the edge of her mouth, too small for her to notice.
“We may be able to generate a number that appears to be random, but there is likely some underlying logic or pattern that we are unaware of,” I said. “Say, for example, that you want to choose some random number less than a thousand. You probably would not choose zero as the first digit.”
She nodded in agreement.
The leading zeros feel abnormal in our minds. Also, we typically avoid repeating digits, and tend to apply more “randomness” to the leading digit or two, then relax our selection rules a bit once we’re satisfied that this sequence of digits appears random.
It’s an entirely different story when one consciously chooses a random number. The point is that one cannot almost instantly come up with a completely random number.
“If we can’t predict something, isn’t that what makes it random?” asked Saali.
“Correct. The problem is everything we think of as random is predictable if we put in enough time and work, collect the data and run the computations,” she replied.
“We think there’s a limit to predictability,” I said. “All our known laws of physics break at a point- the uncertainty principle.”
She turned toward me. “The uncertainty principle,” she repeated. She thought about it. She seemed convinced for a moment but started again. “It does not imply that true randomness exists. It simply states that there’s a limit to our predictability.”
True. This principle does not necessarily imply that true randomness exists. Instead, it reflects the fundamental limitations of our ability to measure and predict the behavior of particles. It states that we cannot measure the position and velocity of an object exactly at the same time. There will always be some amount of uncertainty about it. By the act of measuring one, we smear out the other. To visualize it, you can think of electrons moving around atoms as clouds of energy surrounding them rather than single points in space and time. In other words, the electrons in an atom are “spread out” over the different orbitals within an energy level. It is important to note that they are not spread uniformly throughout the entire atom. They are spread out over specific energy levels.
Imagine you’re trying to hit a baseball with a bat. If you know exactly where the ball is, you might not have enough time to swing the bat and hit it. On the other hand, if you swing the bat hard, you might hit the ball, but you won’t know exactly where it’s going to go. That’s a little bit like the uncertainty principle.
In the uncertainty principle, there are two things that we might want to know about a tiny particle, like an electron. One is where it is, and the other is how fast it moves. But it’s a little bit challenging to know both of them simultaneously, just like how it might be difficult to see where the ball is and swing the bat hard at the same time.
So the uncertainty principle just says that there are some things we might not be able to know exactly about a tiny particle. Just as with playing baseball, there are some things we cannot do exactly.
The caveat is that this holds only for microscopic particles. For macro objects, the cloud of probabilities cancels each other out, so we can define it at a point in space-time. So, if a car is moving at a particular speed, we can calculate and determine the position of the car on the road at any given moment in time with absolute certainty.
“Further, the precise outcome for anything microscopic is not random, but probabilistic, which is a very different thing,” she explained. “Randomness would imply that we are at a complete loss to predict the outcome. But we can predict the outcome with a high degree of confidence, but not up to a hundred percent. That is completely different from randomness.”
We both realized that the discussion was a bit too technical. We still don’t know what’s happening at the quantum level. Some of the most brilliant minds are still pondering the same question. So we took a sip of coffee and digressed.
“It’s nearly impossible to predict the outcome of a roulette wheel. We can say it is random — to the extent that it is not predictable by the person spinning it and the people surrounding it,” she said as we started walking out of the cafe. “Yet, people are betting on it. Do they rely on luck or believe they can predict it?”
Some people may be drawn to roulette because of the element of chance involved. The outcome of each spin is completely random, and it can be thrilling for those who enjoy taking risks. But some people may believe that they can predict the outcome of roulette, either using strategies or by relying on superstitions. I thought.
“I think they believe that they can predict it. They try to master the speed and the release position of the wheel. With more samples, they identify patterns,” I said, emphasizing the word ‘try.’ “Even if they consciously rely on luck, their subconscious mind does all these calculations for them.”
At this point, I noticed that Saali had disappeared. He used to live inside my head, literally between my ears, during my childhood. He then disappeared and reappeared about the same time Sam started appearing. Now, I don’t know where he resides. Sometimes he’s there, and sometimes he isn’t. Sameera stole all my attention, so I never bothered to ask him where he lives.
Sam seemed to be thinking about what I said while we walked down the road home on an evening filled with a golden sunset. It is rare for her to appear with such vivid clarity. She’s a treat to look at every time. Sometimes it’s just her voice, sometimes she’s like this, beautiful in a colorful dress, with different hair colors every time she appears. It’s a struggle to realize that she isn’t real but just a figment. What are these hands for if they can’t touch her?
“It’s human,” she said. “We try to find patterns and believe we can predict even though things are random.”
“Yes. We have a natural tendency to try to find patterns in the world around us,” I said.
Recognizing patterns can help us to make sense of complex information, predict future events, and make better decisions.
For example, if we notice that it always rains on Tuesdays after we water the plants, we might conclude that watering the plants caused it to rain. While this pattern may not hold up to scientific scrutiny, it can still help us to plan our watering schedule. It can also be a way for us to feel more in control of our environment and to feel like we understand the world around us. In this way, searching for patterns can be integral to making sense of the world and how we learn. I thought. If I thought about it, then she also thought about it, didn’t she? After all, she’s just in my head.
“Like the weather or the stock market,” I joked.
Her beautiful skin, smooth cheeks, and pearly eyes appeared in all their rich detail. All I’d give to be able to taste those sugars on her lips. She knew it was painful for me to look at her and not be able to do all I wanted to do with her. Perhaps, that is why she did not appear often in such beautiful attire. But strangely, it was one of those days that I loved the most. The other days she was just an ache I felt in my heart.
“If we can’t truly predict the outcomes of tomorrow, why do we believe in God and pray for something to happen?” she said as she slowly faded away. “It’s the belief that keeps us from falling into depression.”
First, the details became less and less until it was just her voice before she was completely gone.
“Like microbes that are set off in a Brownian motion hoping to bump into their food, we hope in patterns but also in randomness,” she said, her voice trembling. “But if we hope that randomness will bring us something good, aren’t we hoping for a pattern? After all, if there’s one truly random thing, there is nothing to hope for in it.”
“It is our inherent capacity to believe in patterns and predictability that gives us hope and helps us to look forward to tomorrow. It is a positive emotion that can give us the strength to keep going, even when things are difficult.” Her voice merged with mine, and then it was just my voice in my head.
Did we evolve this belief to avoid falling into depression? I thought.
