Seems like a simple question, right? Randomness is unpredictability, a lack of recognisable patterns. That seems like a black and white answer.

But everything has a pattern, and everything has some predictable series of events that results in the supposed randomness. Take a tree growing in a forest, where no human has intervened in its position. It seems like it's random where it grows, but there's a multitude of factors and a sequence of events that make it not so random at all.

First, a tree drops a seed, usually within a fruit. This isn't random, a tree has evolved to wrap its seed in fruit so an animal or bird will eat it and spread the seeds. It's also not random when or where the seed drops; it drops on the ground around its progenitor, and it drops when the fruit is ripe. Ripeness is not random, not is gravity. Already, just from a tree dropping a seed, we have physics and evolution as factors.

Next, an animal or a bird eats the fruit containing the seed. This also isn't random; animals need to eat, and they've evolved to be able to eat these fruits and seeds, even those that humans can't. Some poisonous berries, which contain bush seeds, are perfectly edible by birds and animals simply because they've evolved resistance against the toxins.

Next, they move and eventually expel the seed. Of course, their movement isn't random either - they're going home, or travelling to hunt, or travelling to escape the cold. I don't need to tell you why them expelling the seed isn't random either. The seed may not travel far, or may travel quite a long way, but its journey isn't random. The only truly random factor now is when it drops, but again, factors like digestion make this no longer random.

Finally, the new tree grows, because the environment it's in is capable of maintaining life. This is down to biology and ecology - soil is never just soil, it contains minerals and nutrients that certain trees can feed on. It also contains moisture that the tree uses to grow. Soil without those factors will not allow for tree growth.

So none of it is truly random, it just appears to be when viewed with a wide lens.

This is actually a common issue in programming - you cannot create true randomness, there always has to be some obscure pattern, even if the numbers worked with are in the billions. You can hit a series of events that brings you continuous 'good luck' in a video game, or continuous 'bad luck', you can have a mix. But it isn't random, it just seems that way.

This post was last edited 16 hours, 59 minutes ago.