
See Randomness - kunqiana
http://paulgraham.com/randomness.html
======
nreece

      "You see this goblet?" asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master.
    
      "For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it.
      It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in
      beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it.
      But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over
      or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and
      shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’
    
      When I understand that the glass is already broken,
      every moment with it is precious."

~~~
unalone
I just talked with a friend for three hours about existence and being and
comprehending our mortality, and this guy summarizes it in seven sentences.

Thank you very much for posting.

------
look_lookatme
No offense to PG, but I really feel this is a better piece on, maybe not the
same idea, but a similar sentiment:

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html>

~~~
radu_floricica
> or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father
> whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying
> to rush to the hospital,

Yes, you can choose what your mind does, but this is simply playing make-
believe. No self-respecting mind is going to eat this for more then 10
minutes. Changing your thinking works, but it has to be a bit more subtle (and
complicated) then this.

I really liked this:
<http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/minsky07/minsky07_index.html>

~~~
Retric
I don't think thought is all that uniform across humanity. I don't walk around
with a little voice yammering about all of life’s petty annoyances.

Back in school I was diagnosed as exceptionally gifted / learning disabled. So
I am probably an extreme outlier, but I don't think of myself as the voice in
my head. The voice is stuck with language which is this huge, unwieldy
instrument, that's far too slow to be interesting. If feels like there are
separate machines that can preplan how to move my body, solve math problems,
play a video game, etc. Still composing this sentence feels more like
remembering the words that best fit the idea, while scrabbling to find the
next word to fill out the logical sequence.

Anyway, the best analogy for who I am might be the entity that decides which
ideas are terrible and which ones are reasonable enough to keep. But, I don’t
hear other people talking about themselves like this, so I wonder if there is
all that much commonality. When there are so many ways solve a programming
problem why assume that everyone is wired up the same way. Considering all the
crazy people out there and how people can function with significant brain
damage, there is probably a wide range of internal landscapes even among
normal seeming people.

PS: Consider how many different ways people you know react to alcohol a simple
drug and then consider love as a huge cascade of chemical responses. Do you
really think all of humanity reacts the same way internally?

~~~
radu_floricica
Marvin Minsky wrote a couple of books on the subject - the link is the fist
chapter to one of them (The Emotion Machine and Society of Mind). They're
pretty much what you're saying.

------
miked
Graham's Razor: _If you have to choose between two theories, prefer the one
that doesn't center on you._. (With apologies to Mr. Occam.)

BTW, I think the last line might be better phrased as "See indifference." The
ubiquity of causation requires that much/most of the word isn't random. It
just doesn't give a damn about us. "Seeing indifference", and how to get past
it, is probably also a good starting point for new businesses pondering their
marketing plan.

~~~
cwp
There's also "See mediocrity"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediocrity_principle>

and "See yourself"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle>

I love the tension between these two ideas. The universe must be organized in
a way that supports your existence, because, well, you exist. But your
existence is just a fluke, made possible by the fact that the universe is what
it is. The universe wasn't created for your convenience.

------
projectileboy
It's probably not a coincidence that Mr. Graham revisited this essay after
having his first child; there's nothing quite like parenthood for ejecting you
from the center of your own universe.

~~~
pg
Actually it is a complete coincidence. I'd always meant to repost this on
paulgraham.com eventually, and I posted it mostly unchanged.

~~~
febeling
Nice, how this comment and pg's answer illustrate the point of the essay.

------
sovande
That article seemed full of purpose the first time I read it, the second time,
not so much. More like a random selection of slogans and triviality.

~~~
idlewords
There's a pleasant irony here, too, since the hallmark of Paul Graham's essays
is overgeneralizing from personal experience.

~~~
thunk
There's a pleasant irony _here_ , too, since that's an overgeneralization.

~~~
khafra
Everyone overgeneralizes from extremely limited data. At least, I do.

~~~
thunk
Nice. You were joking, right? Sometimes it's hard to tell.

~~~
bkovitz
I don't think it's a joke. You have no choice but to overgeneralize from
experience. If you limited yourself to only what you can support by direct
observation, you would be catatonic or dead.

~~~
thunk
Perhaps you have no choice but to _generalize_ from experience. But some
people are better than others at avoiding _over_ generalization.

Anyway, the juxtaposition of "Everyone ... At least I do" seems to peg it as a
joke, given the subject.

~~~
fburnaby
For example, I figured everyone would continue to write one-line responses,
making this thread continue in its pleasing diagonal venture across the page.
Guess I was wrong.

------
thunk
_Even the concept of "me" turns out to be fuzzy around the edges if you
examine it too closely._

Try not to examine it _too_ closely without proper guidance, though: it's a
little more than just fuzzy.

~~~
anc2020
Please could someone elaborate on how "me" is a fuzzy concept or provide a
link?

~~~
sp332
Really simplistic answer, but should get you started: there is no single
definable thing that is identifiably "you". If you lost a foot, would you
still be you? At what point does the food you eat become a part of you? If you
lost your memories, or changed your mind about something you believe deeply,
or if you go to sleep, do you stop being you?

~~~
sophacles
Another angle:

How many of the tags you use to idendify yourself are actually group
membership tags... e.g. pythonista, founder, etc.?

How many of the activities you do only make sense in the context of people
(productive member of society stuff)? Even more, how many of the things you do
are because of the consequences for or from others (feed your family, help
your friends, do something recognized as really cool)?

Where "me" stops and society begins is always a bit fuzzy.

------
palsecam
> No one knows who said "never attribute to malice what can be explained by
> incompetence"...

It is said to be Napoléon Bonaparte.

> ...but it is a powerful idea.

Yes anyway, this is what matters and this is "true".

~~~
skmurphy
"They have a saying in Chicago Mr. Bond "Once is happenstance. Twice is
coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." Auric Goldfinger to James Bond
in Ian Fleming's "Goldfinger"

See also <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor>

------
amichail
I think people who pursue startups see the world as revolving around them.

In any case, I would like to know about tech examples of this:

 _So if you want to discover things that have been overlooked till now, one
really good place to look is in our blind spot: in our natural, naive belief
that it's all about us. And expect to encounter ferocious opposition if you
do._

------
prakash
_No, it turns out, we're not even the protagonists: we're just the latest
model vehicle our genes have constructed to travel around in._

PG: Did you write this on etherpad? Can you share that link? I wanted to get a
look at how this essay was shaped, specifically the above mentioned sentence.
Thanks!

~~~
pg
Unfortunately Etherpad didn't exist when this was written, in 2006.

~~~
prakash
Thanks!

------
kirubakaran
More recommendations of books that can change our thinking, please...

~~~
igorhvr
When I was 17 years old I read "Beyond Good and Evil", by Nietzsche.

( <http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4363> )

That book truly changed the way I lived and the way I thought.

~~~
Perceval
I thought his _Genealogy of Morality_ was better executed in deconstructing
our ideas of right and wrong.

------
cschep
So it has been proved we weren't created by (a) (g)God? Truly?

I'm not convinced.

~~~
netsp
I think your question actually demonstrates a principle behind this essay.
Paradigm shifts come from discarding assumptions. Often, this is embodied as
correcting the question instead of the answer.

To me, the most convincing atheist argument has always been some variation of
Russell's teapot.

Accepting Russell's argument (which I think is very hard not to without
challenging knowledge generally) you cease to ask that question. Just because
religion happens to usually come before atheism doesn't mean that atheism
needs to prove itself. The burden of proof is on the theist because of the
nature of the claim.

There is no need to prove that gods do not exist to be an atheist.

~~~
danteembermage
To take your argument one step further, I think a believer/atheist is a relic
from the middle ages. Why is it so important to declare a lack of a belief in
a particular variety of diety? Only because the one version was historically
popular and so just not believing that one notion was enough to be a belief
system.

Now that we're not burning or crushing people for disavowing the state church
we don't need to define the belief system solely on that criteria anymore.

Suppose you firmly believed the answer to the simulation argument was that we
are indeed living in a simulation. Who runs the code? By any reasonable
definition of god you have some; they may be petty, or foreign, or unknowable
but you've got gods all the same. Yes they are not Christian gods, so in that
sense the person is still a-Christian-theist but does that still have meaning.

Or suppose the earth was seeded with amino acids by a traveling and
functionally immortal alien race who monitor earth by ansible and adjust
things for the better every now and again when people ask them too. Athiest?
Well sort of.

The claim that there are no simulation masters, no alien races, no omniscient
AI spy satellites, no ... is certainly possible, but it seems like we're back
to thinking that we humans are special and the center of the universe.

This is partly just a matter of verbal semantics but I think just deciding to
be not Christian/Muslim/Jewish/etc. often leads to theological laziness about
other possibilities, and as atheism becomes more commonplace (it's hard to
imagine that it won't) maybe it won't be enough to just join the camp and call
it good.

~~~
netsp
_The claim that there are no simulation masters, no alien races, no omniscient
AI spy satellites, no ... is certainly possible, but it seems like we're back
to thinking that we humans are special and the center of the universe._

Huh?!

~~~
swolchok
Perhaps the point is easier to see if you consider "no alien races" in
isolation -- the lack of intelligent extraterrestrial life seems to lead
directly to the notion that we humans are special (i.e., the most intelligent
form of life in the entire Universe). On the other hand, the question of
whether there are any intelligent civilizations within a distance such that
contact could be established without _both_ such civilizations inventing
travel at relativistic speeds (if only one is near-light speed, maybe the
other one ages and dies before being reached) may provide an "out". I'm not
sure whether we can actually beat aging by driving toward each other at, say,
0.9c each relative to our home planets; it's been a while since I did time
dilation in physics.

------
col16
The reality is quite the opposite. The history of ides is _not_ a history of
gradually discarding the assumption that it's all about us - rather, it's a
history of building up and defending the assumption that it's all about us.
Why? Because if there is no God, there is no ultimate being which we are
accountable to. Although evolution doesn't _have to_ lead to the conclusion
that there is no God, we happily assume it does---because then we can all be
our own gods, making up our own rules. Sure, we might not think the sun
revolves around our world any more, but we are selfish in many many other
(more subtle) ways.

~~~
roundsquare
Thats not really accurate. There is a difference between believing its "all
about us" and believing "we can do whatever we want." They are in many ways
counter to each other.

If what we do doesn't have any meaning (i.e. if no one is watching) then we
might as well do anything we want. By discarding the idea of god, its true
that we do tend to place ourselves as the highest beings in existence, but
that doesn't mean we put ourselves at the center, we just discard the idea
that there is a center.

~~~
col16
Ok, agreed - discarding the centre doesn't necessitate that we put ourselves
in that spot. What I would argue though is that by our human nature have a
strong tenancy to put ourselves in the centre. We're not always blatantly
selfish (or proud), but if we really look at ourselves, we're pretty good at
it in lots of small ways.

------
bluishgreen
When something bad happens most of the times its the situation/randomness that
is the cause, when something good happens most of the time it is caused by a
person.

Humans are the vehicles of anti-randomness, we make patterns.

------
davidmathers
Great little essay until the last line.

Yay:

 _Conversely, if you have to choose between two theories, prefer the one that
doesn't center on you._

This is exactly my primary article of faith in life. (By faith I mean the
stuff I fill the missing gaps in my knowledge with in order to make actionable
decisions.)

Nay:

 _See randomness._

1\. I'm not sure what this even means. How does one learn to see randomness
and just what are they seeing when they see it?

2\. It's not the positive version of "stop inserting yourself in the chain of
causality". (Is there even a positive way to say "stop doing that thing you're
doing"?)

 _I say pick b._

b is not random. It's just not about you.

~~~
pg
_I'm not sure what this even means._

I meant you should actively seek out ways in which you're seeing patterns
where there aren't any.

~~~
davidmathers
Ok, I see what you're getting at.

"Bias: your pattern recognition is overzealous" would be a great companion
essay, which I would love to read. Especially ideas for countering it.

A line from that essay showing up at the end of the "Bias: you think it's
about you/your species, but it isn't" essay seems quite.. random.

Sorry.

~~~
khafra
"Miss pareidolia" isn't quite as catchy as "see randomness."

------
rgrieselhuber
"See randomness" has been a favorite proverb of mine ever since I read it. I
also tend to use it when evaluating systems / situations from a risk
management perspective (eg. raising kids).

------
paulodeon
While this makes perfect sense from an intellectual standpoint, pragmatically
speaking it won't help you much in day to day life.

Self-centrism, while no doubt obstructive in the search for a cure to cancer
can be quite useful when say, asking for a raise or deciding whether to ask
that girl out.

I find it quite useful, when unsure about something, to assume the option that
is most beneficial to you.

This positive self-centrism could also come in quite handy when starting a
startup.

------
mwerty
Read the chapter on sense making from The Black Swan for a possible reason for
why we normally don't see randomness.

------
arijo
So - if evolution does not have a purpose - let's make it our mission, as
human beings, to seek for truth in life and for life in a world more resilient
to the randomness of the universe.

------
ibsulon
See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error>

------
nopassrecover
I'd find it hard to make abstractions if I assumed everything was random
coincidence.

~~~
shiro
He doesn't say "see _only_ randomness". It's a counter proposition against our
tendency to assume too much.

~~~
nopassrecover
Good point and I agree with his general sentiment. In fact, to throw in a
political molotov, I wish the "see outside your self" was viewed by those who
oppose the whole health care thing in the U.S. I'm in Australia but we tend to
loosely follow a "veil of ignorance (wiki it if unfamiliar)" approach to this
kind of stuff.

------
Create
Quite to the contrary, life/living is about fighting entropy (or second law of
thermodynamics _), "randomness".

This leads to the most famous and one of the most controversial elements of
the [a] play. Adam cannot understand what the purpose of his existence is if
mankind's future is so bleak. The last line is spoken by God: "Mondottam,
ember, küzdj és bízva bízzál!" ("I have told you, Man: fight on, and trust!")
Depending on the interpretation, this can either be seen cynically as the
words of a capricious deity, or else pointing to a "hope beyond all hope,"
that God has a purpose for all things which man may not necessarily
comprehend. This is markedly different from Paradise Lost, where the Christian
hope is explicitly spelled out.

_ listen to the talk:
[http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2009/2641555....](http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2009/2641555.htm)

------
earle
If you can observe randomness, does that affect its randomness?

~~~
khafra
No. If you can predict, that does affect its randomness.

------
enthalpyx
This article is random, I don't see any purpose

