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.