Bob Schwartz

For JDS with love

I had a recent conversation about coin flipping.

Tom Stoppard’s earliest of many great plays is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The title of the play is taken from a line in Hamlet, in which these characters play a small part in the greater drama. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor players in Hamlet, but the Stoppard version makes them the main focus.

The play begins with their betting on flipped coins. The unlikely result is that coins always turn up heads. They discuss this seeming anomaly, not completely understanding, nor understanding that the small part they are playing in the drama will result in their death.

Probability is a funny thing. Over many flips, we say the chances are that the number of heads and tails will be about equal, 50/50. But seemingly unlikely, it could be heads every time, since on any one flip, the chance remains 50/50. Stoppard makes this point funny, as is the play, but also a profound truth in the lives of the characters and in our lives.

I’ve written multiple times about randomness. Randomness and probability are siblings, maybe twins. Two sides of the same coin. I’ve pointed out Gregory Bateson’s saying that for him, a random number table is at the heart of his holy of holies.

The significance of probability stretches from the Bible to AI.

The Bible begins with a scene of chaos, a universe of randomness. People, pre-Bible and now, want some order and predictability. So the very first event in the Bible has God bringing order out of chaos, out of tohu and bohu.

AI operates on principles of probability. In that it operates not unlike the way that people also generate information, only from greater knowledge than most and more comprehensively and quickly. Though, as it has become obvious, not always as creatively.

We live with randomness, no matter how much we believe that absolute order and predictability can be imposed. God may be able to eliminate randomness and chaos in the Bible, but we can’t. Knowing the limits of probability means knowing the nature of reality, our reality.

Flip a coin.

Threats, lies, bullying, beating another party to death is not negotiation. Which explains the long list—a lifetime—of failed Trump negotiations, as a “businessman” and as president. Lose-lose describes many of these deals. The latest is the abandoned attempt to reach a trade deal with Canada, with Canadian retaliatory tariffs now about to be put in place, and with most Canadians, looking at their former North American friends, and saying they don’t need and don’t want the products America has to offer.

This all gives “Art” a very bad name.

Many are feeling dislocated and lost right now. Even the rich and powerful may look around at all the gold they have attached to every available surface in their house and still feel dislocated and lost.

I think about what simple single solution there might to all of the challenges we are currently facing. Not surprisingly, there isn’t one.

But there may be simple help for that feeling of being dislocated and lost in all this.

Most days I place a mat on the floor, place a cushion on the mat, and sit on it. I meditate, but what I am saying here is that you don’t have to.

All you have to do is get a mat and cushion, place them on the floor, and sit. No special position or meditation needed. Just sit there, for however long you are comfortable. This is your place, right there, right now. You are not dislocated or lost because, to repeat, you are right there.

What you do and say and think after that sitting is entirely up to you. Hopefully you are not feeling as dislocated and lost, but maybe you are, for a little while, or maybe for the rest of the day.

But for a moment, there is a place for you, a place you sat and can sit again. Your place.