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Have you ever wondered what randomness is? According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, randomness is the fact of being done, chosen, etc. without somebody deciding in advance what is going to happen, or without any regular pattern. Hence, it is a nondeterministic event (an event that can not be directly determined by another event). In this definition lies my problem, because we cannot define randomness as something rather than the absence of something else, namely a deterministic reason for an event. I believe the use of this definition lets us explain events without truly understanding it which limits further critical thinking about its true cause. When we call an event random, what we say is, this is an event of which I don’t know the deterministic reason. This leaves me to wonder if there exists a truly random event, since not knowing a deterministic reason and not existing are not the same thing. To illustrate, imagine a coin and let me ask you heads or tails? The result of this coin flip is random, since with the information given, it is impossible to exactly determine the outcome. However now suppose I ask the question again, but you get more information, which side the coin is originally facing, what forces are exercised on the coin, etc., with enough information a physicist could exactly calculate the trajectory of the coin and what side it will land on. Hence the coin flip was never truly random, it was just that you did not have enough information to find the deterministic reason for the outcome. The example above illustrates the importance of information in defining randomness. Since it was a lack of information which resulted in the coin toss being perceived as random. This perceived randomness is also known as pseudo random. Computer programs are also pseudo random, since we have not been able to create a program that generates truly random numbers. Most things people consider random are therefore already pseudo random without them realizing. With this realization let’s return to my question if a truly random event exists. This question is impossible to answer, since it might be that we do not know its deterministic reason or it might be that it doesn’t exist. However, which of the two is true is impossible to answer. Hence when talking about a random event, it is always an assumption that it is truly random rather than a fact. While I am very critical of the existence of true randomness. I do believe the assumption of randomness is very useful. Since even if no true randomness would exist, it would still require a person to know everything there is to know to understand every deterministic reason. If this is possible, is a completely different topic, but that it is not the case now seems very likely. Hence, I believe randomness is a very practical way of reasoning given the information that is available, but one should be aware that this randomness is just an assumption. To illustrate I give a final example: Imagine a multiple-choice test which consists of 10 questions. For the first nine questions you are certain of the answer. However, the last one you don’t understand. Since you did not properly study the topic of this question, coming up with an answer through reasoning is impossible. To have a chance to be rewarded the full 10 points you guess the final answer. By guessing you have approached the final question as being random. Which from your perspective is completely rational since you did not have enough information to understand it. While guessing the answer might have been a very practical solution to not having all required information, if you truly want to understand the complete contents of the test it might be useful to study the topic of the final question further. |