[Applause]
thank you our life is governed by random
events
it’s an incredible series of
coincidences that led us here today had
it not been for this asteroid randomly
hitting our planets and sixty-six
million years ago and making life really
miserable for the dinosaurs human beings
would just not exist
maybe your great grandmother and your
great grandfather met by some crazy
coincidence otherwise you wouldn’t be
here and perhaps you just met somebody
purely by chance who convinced you to
come here today and listen to this talk
but from a scientific point of view this
incredible power of randomness in our
life is actually strange because science
is actually the opposite science is very
good at predicting the future we can
predict the products of chemical
reactions we can calculate the stopping
distance of your car on a wet road we
can calculate the future positions of
asteroids and planets with incredible
accuracy so does this mean that more and
more science will lead to better and
better predictions if there is a course
for every effect and if the universe is
basically governed by immutable laws of
nature does this mean that in some sense
the future is already set in stone is
randomness just an illusion do random
events just appear random to us because
we are not clever enough to see what’s
causing them well this used to be quite
a popular view among scientists and the
French philosopher pierre-simon Laplace
illustrated that in a famous thought
experiment called laplace s demon
imagined Laplace said a super
intelligent being with infinite
intelligence and the power to solve the
most complex mathematical equations in
an instant and let us assume that this
super intelligent demon knows everything
there is to know about the physical
world every position and velocity of
every particle rock and planet in the
whole universe as well as the
mathematical law
governing the motion for such a demon
Laplace argued the future would just be
as obvious as the present because every
future event however distant must follow
and ambiguously from what is happening
today so in this world view the future
is deterministic there is no room for
randomness and the fate of the universe
has already been determined at the
moment of the Big Bang and since then
the universe is just following the laws
of cause and effect much like the gear
of clock predictably ticking away once
it has been set in motion well this is a
quite compelling idea but modern physics
tells us that things are not quite as
easy modern physics says that actually
the future cannot be predicted that
randomness and unpredictability are very
very real but how can this be how can
the laws of nature allow that well it
was quantum physics which brought a
completely new kind of randomness into
science
because quantum physics basically said
says that some things cannot be
predicted that some things do not really
have a cause
take a radioactive atom for instance we
know for sure that at some point it is
going to decay we know it’s half-life we
can calculate the probability that it’s
still going to be here tomorrow if we
have a billion of those atoms we can
calculate with great accuracy how many
of them will still be around next
Saturday but if you’re interested in the
fate of one particular atom if you want
to know when this one particular atom is
going to decay there is just no way to
tell even if you know everything there
is to know about this atom even if you
measure it perfectly you cannot predict
its future you could say that nature
itself does not know what’s going to
happen it just decays at some point can
be now can be in a billion years it’s
just random and this is true for many
quantum effects quantum theory tells us
the probability of possible outcomes but
it does not necessarily tell us what is
going to happen in one particular
instance
so if you’re confused by that don’t
worry you’re in good company when this
weird quantum randomness was discovered
some of the world’s brightest minds were
absolutely not happy with that Albert
Einstein was one of those who said it’s
impossible that real randomness is built
into the fundamental laws of nature but
he was wrong
God does not play dice Einstein famously
said this colleague Niels Bohr answered
well Einstein stopped telling God what
to do but maybe you could argue maybe
this is not so bad
maybe this weird quantum randomness just
effects small stuff such as atoms and
molecules and maybe in a larger scale
the universe is still predictable if we
forget about this this is microscopic
stuff which doesn’t matter anyway but
unfortunately it does not work like that
you cannot draw a line between the
really random quantum world of small
things and the world of larger things
with which behave orderly and
predictably as it turns out pretty much
everything in the universe is random and
in order to understand that we have to
think about the second important theory
which completely smashed the idea of
predictability and that is chaos theory
chaos theory basically tells us how bad
it is to make small mistakes so usually
we’re used to the idea that a small
error will not completely change the
outcome if you if you cook spaghetti and
you use a tiny little bit too much salt
it will not change the end result into
pork chops and if you if you launch an
interplanetary spacecraft and the the
speed is just a tiny little bit higher
than it should be then it will probably
still head towards the right planet so
we’re used to that idea that that small
errors are not so bad that pretty good
knowledge about something at least gives
us a pretty good idea of what’s going to
happen next but as it turns out is not
true in fact even almost perfect
knowledge about something may be too
little for long-term predictions and a
wonderful example of that is the weather
we can have
highly sophisticated computer
simulations calculating a weather
forecast and probably the predictions
for tomorrow will be quite good but
nobody in the world can calculate where
it’s going to rain in two years it’s
just fundamentally not possible and it
never will be so imagine you have an
almost perfect computer simulation of
the weather on the whole globe but there
is one small butterfly sitting somewhere
flapping its wings and twirling around a
few molecules in the air and even if
your computer simulation may otherwise
be perfect you did not include this one
butterfly then this tiny error this one
butterfly flapping its wings may be
enough to render your long-term
predictions completely useless so
imagine you could make a perfect copy of
the whole universe at some point in time
and the only difference between the two
copies is that in in the original
universe the butterfly flaps its wings
whereas in the copy it decides to just
sit there doing nothing and of course at
the beginning this tiny difference
between those two universes would hardly
be visible and the the weather and the
two copies of planet Earth will develop
in a very very similar way but this tiny
little difference it will grow
exponentially in time it will become
huge and at some point you might find
yourself in a terrible hurricane in one
universe where it’s the copy of you in
the other universe would just experience
a pleasant little breeze so this tiny
error this tiny difference is amplified
and leads to two completely different
outcomes that’s the butterfly effect
this is the core of chaos theory and
this of course destroys the idea of the
universe being predictable
so basically quantum theory says that
small things can happen and predictably
without a real cause and chaos theory
says that small thing is kind of huge
consequences and at least in combination
this is the end for the plusses steamin
being able to predict the future so even
on the level of basic fundamental
physics the future cannot be predicted
and of course there are many other
levels at which randomness
enters our lives biology for instance
the DNA of two parents is randomly
jumbled up creating a new living being
also our health is influenced by random
events of course we can increase our
chances by by eating healthy food buy
things and exercise by trying to stay
away from harmful stuff but in the end
in order to stay healthy we need to be
lucky there can be some random quantum
effects breaking up DNA molecules which
can eventually lead to cancer so
something completely random can have
very dramatic effects and in spite of
all that even though we are faced with
random events every day we as human
beings are remarkably bad at dealing
with the concept of randomness we are
clinging to the illusion that everything
can be controlled and predicted we are
forced to see the universe in terms of
cause and effect and refined connections
even if there are none somebody sees a
black cat and then later that day he
loses his wallet
of course there is no logical connection
between those two things it’s just a
random coincidence but our mind is
always trying to construct theories and
telling stories and and that way a
random coincidence can turn into a
widely believed superstition a soccer
randomly worn by a football player
during a great match may suddenly turn
into an indispensable lucky charm which
has to be worn in every game from now on
a healing crystal is given to a patient
who coincidentally gets better and then
this this healing crystal is considered
to be a miracle cure somebody performs a
ritual to make it rain and when the rain
finally comes and statistically at some
point it has to then this ritual is
considered to be highly effective and
passed on for generations this does not
happen because people are stupid
this happens because it’s human nature
this was demonstrated in a very nice
experiment by the Japanese researcher
cui Jian oh he prepared a room with an
electronic scoreboard and several levers
and people were asked to in
Riis the score but they were not told
how to do so so they just randomly
pulled some levers and sometimes they
would gain points and so everybody would
which would say well okay I figured out
how to do that and maybe I have to pull
this lever three times i I’ve to pull
all of them in the right order
and the factor for us that nothing those
people did had any influence on the
score whatsoever this call was just
increased automatically viewed according
to some predefined random pattern but
everybody in there thought they had
understood how the system works and they
were responsible for what’s happening
and they had made the system predictable
well they had not but probably every one
of us would have made the same mistake
because we just like to tell ourselves
that we know what’s going to happen just
like Laplace esteem and even if this is
just not possible and this is also the
reason why we have a completely
distorted view of success and failure we
see somebody with an impressive career
and we say wow he must be great at
making all the right decisions we meet
somebody who’s rich and we say well she
must be incredibly intelligent we see
somebody give a TED talk and say well
this must be a really interesting person
well fact is no it’s just not true
quite often success just comes down to
dumb luck so whether or not we are
successful is something that that’s
quite often we just cannot influence of
course it’s it’s good to be intelligent
it’s good to work hard if you play your
cards right you increase your chances
but it doesn’t influence which cards
you’re being dealt purely by coincidence
maybe the rich guy you admire was just
randomly born into a rich family maybe
he had a weird business idea which was
actually stupid but miraculously in this
case it worked out and maybe the badly
dressed fellow sitting next to you in
the bus is actually a genius and could
have been the next Silicon Valley
superstar but for some completely random
reason his company tanked and he lost it
all
so the difference betwee
a glorious victory in the devastating
defeat may just be a little bit of luck
perhaps being at the right place at the
right time or having overheard some
random bit of information or perhaps
even a quantum particle doing something
utterly unpredictable but we don’t want
to believe that we want to plan the
future and that’s why we go to seminars
and we buy books written by successful
people on how to be successful and then
we are faced with incredible wisdom such
as always try to be yourself and always
try hard and have a positive attitude
well that’s nice
but that’s not the recipe for success
it’s the collection of trivialities and
if you if you stick to these rules of
course you may be successful but just as
well you may not it’s it’s a random
coincidence just deal with it and if you
do get rich well it’s great but it
doesn’t mean that you are infallible in
everything you do now and by the way it
does not mean that you necessarily
should go into politics and bestow your
wisdom into the world now life is a game
of chance
we don’t know it’s going to happen and
quite often we don’t have too much
control over it from the motion of tiny
particles to the fate of Nations the
future can neither be planned nor
predicted that’s just a scientific fact
and I don’t think that this is a thought
that you’d scare is quite the opposite
acknowledging the incredible power of
randomness in our life can make us
happier the universe is not just a huge
clockwork that we can tweak in order to
make it tick the way we want and once we
understand that we can stop trying so
hard accepting and even celebrating the
incredible power of random events can
make us more modest in success and more
gracious in defeat when things go well
that’s wonderful but let’s not get
carried away and try to be the next
Superman and if things are bad well
maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on
ourselves
let’s cut herself some slack maybe it
was just bad luck perhaps it was just
the wrong butterfly flapped
it’s wings we will never know we can
never know and that’s a good thing
[Applause]
thank you our life is governed by random
events
it’s an incredible series of
coincidences that led us here today had
it not been for this asteroid randomly
hitting our planets and sixty-six
million years ago and making life really
miserable for the dinosaurs human beings
would just not exist
maybe your great grandmother and your
great grandfather met by some crazy
coincidence otherwise you wouldn’t be
here and perhaps you just met somebody
purely by chance who convinced you to
come here today and listen to this talk
but from a scientific point of view this
incredible power of randomness in our
life is actually strange because science
is actually the opposite science is very
good at predicting the future we can
predict the products of chemical
reactions we can calculate the stopping
distance of your car on a wet road we
can calculate the future positions of
asteroids and planets with incredible
accuracy so does this mean that more and
more science will lead to better and
better predictions if there is a course
for every effect and if the universe is
basically governed by immutable laws of
nature does this mean that in some sense
the future is already set in stone is
randomness just an illusion do random
events just appear random to us because
we are not clever enough to see what’s
causing them well this used to be quite
a popular view among scientists and the
French philosopher pierre-simon Laplace
illustrated that in a famous thought
experiment called laplace s demon
imagined Laplace said a super
intelligent being with infinite
intelligence and the power to solve the
most complex mathematical equations in
an instant and let us assume that this
super intelligent demon knows everything
there is to know about the physical
world every position and velocity of
every particle rock and planet in the
whole universe as well as the
mathematical law
governing the motion for such a demon
Laplace argued the future would just be
as obvious as the present because every
future event however distant must follow
and ambiguously from what is happening
today so in this world view the future
is deterministic there is no room for
randomness and the fate of the universe
has already been determined at the
moment of the Big Bang and since then
the universe is just following the laws
of cause and effect much like the gear
of clock predictably ticking away once
it has been set in motion well this is a
quite compelling idea but modern physics
tells us that things are not quite as
easy modern physics says that actually
the future cannot be predicted that
randomness and unpredictability are very
very real but how can this be how can
the laws of nature allow that well it
was quantum physics which brought a
completely new kind of randomness into
science
because quantum physics basically said
says that some things cannot be
predicted that some things do not really
have a cause
take a radioactive atom for instance we
know for sure that at some point it is
going to decay we know it’s half-life we
can calculate the probability that it’s
still going to be here tomorrow if we
have a billion of those atoms we can
calculate with great accuracy how many
of them will still be around next
Saturday but if you’re interested in the
fate of one particular atom if you want
to know when this one particular atom is
going to decay there is just no way to
tell even if you know everything there
is to know about this atom even if you
measure it perfectly you cannot predict
its future you could say that nature
itself does not know what’s going to
happen it just decays at some point can
be now can be in a billion years it’s
just random and this is true for many
quantum effects quantum theory tells us
the probability of possible outcomes but
it does not necessarily tell us what is
going to happen in one particular
instance
so if you’re confused by that don’t
worry you’re in good company when this
weird quantum randomness was discovered
some of the world’s brightest minds were
absolutely not happy with that Albert
Einstein was one of those who said it’s
impossible that real randomness is built
into the fundamental laws of nature but
he was wrong
God does not play dice Einstein famously
said this colleague Niels Bohr answered
well Einstein stopped telling God what
to do but maybe you could argue maybe
this is not so bad
maybe this weird quantum randomness just
effects small stuff such as atoms and
molecules and maybe in a larger scale
the universe is still predictable if we
forget about this this is microscopic
stuff which doesn’t matter anyway but
unfortunately it does not work like that
you cannot draw a line between the
really random quantum world of small
things and the world of larger things
with which behave orderly and
predictably as it turns out pretty much
everything in the universe is random and
in order to understand that we have to
think about the second important theory
which completely smashed the idea of
predictability and that is chaos theory
chaos theory basically tells us how bad
it is to make small mistakes so usually
we’re used to the idea that a small
error will not completely change the
outcome if you if you cook spaghetti and
you use a tiny little bit too much salt
it will not change the end result into
pork chops and if you if you launch an
interplanetary spacecraft and the the
speed is just a tiny little bit higher
than it should be then it will probably
still head towards the right planet so
we’re used to that idea that that small
errors are not so bad that pretty good
knowledge about something at least gives
us a pretty good idea of what’s going to
happen next but as it turns out is not
true in fact even almost perfect
knowledge about something may be too
little for long-term predictions and a
wonderful example of that is the weather
we can have
highly sophisticated computer
simulations calculating a weather
forecast and probably the predictions
for tomorrow will be quite good but
nobody in the world can calculate where
it’s going to rain in two years it’s
just fundamentally not possible and it
never will be so imagine you have an
almost perfect computer simulation of
the weather on the whole globe but there
is one small butterfly sitting somewhere
flapping its wings and twirling around a
few molecules in the air and even if
your computer simulation may otherwise
be perfect you did not include this one
butterfly then this tiny error this one
butterfly flapping its wings may be
enough to render your long-term
predictions completely useless so
imagine you could make a perfect copy of
the whole universe at some point in time
and the only difference between the two
copies is that in in the original
universe the butterfly flaps its wings
whereas in the copy it decides to just
sit there doing nothing and of course at
the beginning this tiny difference
between those two universes would hardly
be visible and the the weather and the
two copies of planet Earth will develop
in a very very similar way but this tiny
little difference it will grow
exponentially in time it will become
huge and at some point you might find
yourself in a terrible hurricane in one
universe where it’s the copy of you in
the other universe would just experience
a pleasant little breeze so this tiny
error this tiny difference is amplified
and leads to two completely different
outcomes that’s the butterfly effect
this is the core of chaos theory and
this of course destroys the idea of the
universe being predictable
so basically quantum theory says that
small things can happen and predictably
without a real cause and chaos theory
says that small thing is kind of huge
consequences and at least in combination
this is the end for the plusses steamin
being able to predict the future so even
on the level of basic fundamental
physics the future cannot be predicted
and of course there are many other
levels at which randomness
enters our lives biology for instance
the DNA of two parents is randomly
jumbled up creating a new living being
also our health is influenced by random
events of course we can increase our
chances by by eating healthy food buy
things and exercise by trying to stay
away from harmful stuff but in the end
in order to stay healthy we need to be
lucky there can be some random quantum
effects breaking up DNA molecules which
can eventually lead to cancer so
something completely random can have
very dramatic effects and in spite of
all that even though we are faced with
random events every day we as human
beings are remarkably bad at dealing
with the concept of randomness we are
clinging to the illusion that everything
can be controlled and predicted we are
forced to see the universe in terms of
cause and effect and refined connections
even if there are none somebody sees a
black cat and then later that day he
loses his wallet
of course there is no logical connection
between those two things it’s just a
random coincidence but our mind is
always trying to construct theories and
telling stories and and that way a
random coincidence can turn into a
widely believed superstition a soccer
randomly worn by a football player
during a great match may suddenly turn
into an indispensable lucky charm which
has to be worn in every game from now on
a healing crystal is given to a patient
who coincidentally gets better and then
this this healing crystal is considered
to be a miracle cure somebody performs a
ritual to make it rain and when the rain
finally comes and statistically at some
point it has to then this ritual is
considered to be highly effective and
passed on for generations this does not
happen because people are stupid
this happens because it’s human nature
this was demonstrated in a very nice
experiment by the Japanese researcher
cui Jian oh he prepared a room with an
electronic scoreboard and several levers
and people were asked to in
Riis the score but they were not told
how to do so so they just randomly
pulled some levers and sometimes they
would gain points and so everybody would
which would say well okay I figured out
how to do that and maybe I have to pull
this lever three times i I’ve to pull
all of them in the right order
and the factor for us that nothing those
people did had any influence on the
score whatsoever this call was just
increased automatically viewed according
to some predefined random pattern but
everybody in there thought they had
understood how the system works and they
were responsible for what’s happening
and they had made the system predictable
well they had not but probably every one
of us would have made the same mistake
because we just like to tell ourselves
that we know what’s going to happen just
like Laplace esteem and even if this is
just not possible and this is also the
reason why we have a completely
distorted view of success and failure we
see somebody with an impressive career
and we say wow he must be great at
making all the right decisions we meet
somebody who’s rich and we say well she
must be incredibly intelligent we see
somebody give a TED talk and say well
this must be a really interesting person
well fact is no it’s just not true
quite often success just comes down to
dumb luck so whether or not we are
successful is something that that’s
quite often we just cannot influence of
course it’s it’s good to be intelligent
it’s good to work hard if you play your
cards right you increase your chances
but it doesn’t influence which cards
you’re being dealt purely by coincidence
maybe the rich guy you admire was just
randomly born into a rich family maybe
he had a weird business idea which was
actually stupid but miraculously in this
case it worked out and maybe the badly
dressed fellow sitting next to you in
the bus is actually a genius and could
have been the next Silicon Valley
superstar but for some completely random
reason his company tanked and he lost it
all
so the difference betwee
a glorious victory in the devastating
defeat may just be a little bit of luck
perhaps being at the right place at the
right time or having overheard some
random bit of information or perhaps
even a quantum particle doing something
utterly unpredictable but we don’t want
to believe that we want to plan the
future and that’s why we go to seminars
and we buy books written by successful
people on how to be successful and then
we are faced with incredible wisdom such
as always try to be yourself and always
try hard and have a positive attitude
well that’s nice
but that’s not the recipe for success
it’s the collection of trivialities and
if you if you stick to these rules of
course you may be successful but just as
well you may not it’s it’s a random
coincidence just deal with it and if you
do get rich well it’s great but it
doesn’t mean that you are infallible in
everything you do now and by the way it
does not mean that you necessarily
should go into politics and bestow your
wisdom into the world now life is a game
of chance
we don’t know it’s going to happen and
quite often we don’t have too much
control over it from the motion of tiny
particles to the fate of Nations the
future can neither be planned nor
predicted that’s just a scientific fact
and I don’t think that this is a thought
that you’d scare is quite the opposite
acknowledging the incredible power of
randomness in our life can make us
happier the universe is not just a huge
clockwork that we can tweak in order to
make it tick the way we want and once we
understand that we can stop trying so
hard accepting and even celebrating the
incredible power of random events can
make us more modest in success and more
gracious in defeat when things go well
that’s wonderful but let’s not get
carried away and try to be the next
Superman and if things are bad well
maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on
ourselves
let’s cut herself some slack maybe it
was just bad luck perhaps it was just
the wrong butterfly flapped
it’s wings we will never know we can
never know and that’s a good thing
[Applause]
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