Rationalizing Randomness

• People need to make sense of the world and resort to explaining things even if their explanations are wrong. This is called post-hoc rationalization. We can explain anything by fitting our conclusion to the data, but only after it happens. This need to understand that what happened drives us from accepting random explanations in favor of made up explanations. The real purpose of a plan is that it allows you to get moving in some direction. If your strategy motivates you to act, you then have a chance of success.
• We are conditioned to search for similarities, not differences, but our power of predicting is essentially zero. We are more apt to attribute success to brilliance than randomness as it feels better. People find patterns where none exist, and have a hard time recognizing real randomness. For example, Apple even made their shuffle algorithm less random so it would seem more random. Also, the best strategy for playing Rock-Paper-Scissors is to use a random series of choices.

Share this: