Random Non-sense

 It is said that in the early 5th century, a minor theologian of Alexandria composed a treatise, now lost, titled On the Freedom of the Deceived. In it, he proposed a troubling paradox: that a man who freely chooses an illusion is no less imprisoned than a man who is forced to accept a truth. The heresy of this idea was not its logic but its implication—that beneath the mirror of human choice lies an abyss of manipulation, so subtle and intricate it may be indistinguishable from volition. I think often of this Alexandrian and his forgotten scroll when considering the apparent conflict between "free will" and what moderns call "propaganda." The notion that a man chooses freely presumes that his desires, values, and perceptions are his own. Yet what if the very structure of his desires has been fashioned by another—by a con man, a cult leader, or a state with vast machinery of persuasion? Does the hand that turns the key know it forged the lock? Let us consider th...

  The other day, I was reading a small book about "Randomness" and it mentioned the history of lotteries and how they became popular in Europe through the Middle Ages. The word "lottery" refers to the distribution of "lots"; in other words, land parcels, and chance was used to determine "which lot you get." The book also mentioned how CHANCE / RANDOMNESS was seen as a way of "consulting the gods." In other words, a form of magical divination. By coincidence, that same day, I came across Borges' "The Lottery in Babylon" when I wasn’t specifically looking for it. In the story, there are constant drawings on a central mysterious lottery which determine where each person will end up within the vast network of possibilities that exist within the city of Babylon. At any moment, any one person can go from regular worker to rich king, to pauper, to exiled outsider, all in a matter of a moment. I thought to myself:  if my friend en...