What is random? - Are we living in a simulation?

Did you randomly stumble across this article? Welcome to this article on randomness. I wanted to share my opinion on what randomness could be and aim to expand your consciousness.

If nothing is truly random, we can easily link that to the idea of living in a simulation. The idea of us living in a simulated reality is deeply controversial; some may even argue we are living in a simulation today. You could say it would be random if we are living in a reality. Neil deGrasse Tyson mentioned if we had enough computational power to create a world in a computer and give the people in that world free will. Someone in that world will build another world with a computer and so on... Creating endless universes. He then followed up by saying if we were to throw a dart at the universes, would it land on one of the simulated worlds or the real one? It would be pretty random to see which universe gets hit by the dart.

Now let’s get to the main idea of this article, nothing is truly random. What is random? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, random means “happening, done, or chosen by chance rather than according to a plan.” Chosen by chance... that’s interesting. Maybe it was chosen for a reason we don’t understand?

Pretend today is Friday and imagine these are the lottery numbers being drawn:

6, 10, 28, 22, 15, 3, 19

Seems like seven random numbers! But what a shame you didn’t win the lottery! Maybe next time around? So you buy another lottery ticket and wait until next Friday, and the numbers come out:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

What on earth! Obviously, everyone is thinking this lottery drawing was fixed. But actually, these numbers have the same statistical probability as last week’s numbers. Is this random? Or is there something else at play that we don’t understand? The second week’s numbers have an obvious pattern. But the week before doesn’t have an obvious pattern or any pattern at all. Or does it?

I can give you a list of four numbers. 20, 27, 42, 16. Do you think these are random numbers? Or are you calling them random because you don’t know why I picked them? I could have listed the first four numbers I thought of in my head or I could’ve written down my four favourite numbers. Now, these numbers don’t seem random because you understand something you didn’t before.

Are things random? A coincidence? Or something we don’t know?

If there was a page which had billions and billions of jumbled letters, you would say it’s random right? However, within the billions of pages, you will start to see sentences which you can read. Statistically, what will happen is that you may see your name. As your name is essentially a possible outcome of randomly generated letters. Or maybe you will see the alphabet and think there is a pattern. But if that’s a pattern, why are the random letters before it not a pattern? As you go through the pages you will start to see sentences from which you can understand it’s a possible outcome of the “randomly” generated letters.

You might be thinking I’m crazy but let’s get deeper into this and draw it out:

This diagram shows all knowledge humans will ever know. The circle in the middle is the amount of knowledge we know today. (Note: This diagram isn’t drawn to scale but is more of a representation.)

How does this relate to randomness? Do you put something random in the space outside the inner circle, which I call the space of uncertainty? Is randomness another way of uncertainty? Or is something random not actually random but we just don’t understand what, how, or why it came about?

Robert Mathews – a physicist and visiting professor at Aston University – mentions that randomness follows no laws. But if randomness follows no laws, then is the diagram above meaningless? Or is randomness simply beyond our limits of understanding? That’s what I think. If randomness lies beyond the circle and in an open space which we can’t understand or access, could we be living in a simulation? I can’t say for sure, but it’s something to think about. If we code and develop a world and define all laws which govern that world, could people inside that world realise they are in a simulation? Hopefully, I have expanded your consciousness with this random article, but I have one more thing to mention.

Another way to understand randomness is through things we don’t understand. To be philosophical, if there is something random that we don’t understand in life, then its scope is outside of what humans know. What I’m getting at is what is meant to be is meant to be; let things happen because you can’t control what is random. People may think a lot of things are a coincidence, but maybe it happened for reason? You may think this article is random, but maybe this, too, happened for a reason. You reading this could be a random part of your day or it could be part of the simulation.

I hope you enjoyed this article about my idea of randomness. I may write more on my thoughts on this topic if you’re interested. Please share your thought and ideas as well as any other topics you’d like me to talk about.

“From where we stand the rain seems random. If we could stand somewhere else, we would see the order in it.” – Tony Hillerman in Coyote Waits (1990)

About the Author

Hi, I’m Manraj Bains! I study quantitative finance at Babson College and founded the media startup Social Trade, a social app uniting the finance and investing community. I’m deeply curious about quantitative finance, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence.

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mDzcxy2KVI&ab_channel=LarryKing

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/random

https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/is-anything-truly-random