re: #224 freetoken

Contemplating randomness… it may come as a bit of a surprise, but the idea of “random” is a troubling one, not as easy to pin down as one may expect

We are a species that is genetically programmed to find patterns. It is a survival instinct. We don’t cope with ‘random’ at all. If a person looks at a (as well as we can make it) random distribution of, e.g. dot in a 1000x1000 matrix, they will pick out a clumping of data and say ‘look, that’s a pattern, it can’t be random. Ask people to randomly distribute themselves in a room, they will create a totally non-random clumping; people will find cancer clusters near power lines and say look, we have a cause for disease.

Except for vaccinations. That correlation is totes not there.