Fooled by Randomness

Imagine you are playing a game with a big box filled with different colored balls. You know that there are 50 blue balls and 50 red balls in the box, and your job is to guess which ball will be drawn out next.

You start by guessing blue and...oh no! It's a red ball.

You try again, guessing red this time, and...yay! You guessed right.

Now, does that mean you are really good at guessing which ball will come out next? Not really. You just happened to get lucky this time.

That's what "fooled by randomness" means. Sometimes things happen just by chance, but we might attribute those outcomes to our own abilities or the abilities of others. We think that because we guessed correctly once, we must be really good at guessing. Or, we might think that someone is really lucky because they won the lottery twice, when really it's just a coincidence.

It's important to understand that randomness plays a big role in our lives and we shouldn't always assume that every outcome can be attributed to skill or talent.