What Magic players and COVID deniers have in common -- misunderstanding randomness
In a random world, sometimes you repeatedly draw good hands, and sometimes you repeatedly draw bad hands, simply due to randomness. In a random world, good hands and bad hands are randomly distributed, not fairly distributed. Fair distribution would be: you draw a bad hand, and then you draw a good hand. Random distribution means you can draw five bad hands in a row, or five good hands in a row.
On Reddit, sometimes the Magic players from the online Arena will show up to complain that the online "algorithm" is biased against them, because they just drew five bad hands in a row. These complainers inevitably, and rightfully, get downvoted by the community because the law of random numbers explains that sometimes you'll get five bad hands in a row, it's just random! It's not bias.
This randomness works the same way with medicine, vaccines, and viral diseases. Viral replication is an error-prone process with lots of randomness. Over 99% of RNA virus particles are defective and cannot propagate the infection. So you could be exposed to somebody with COVID and not get infected, because the viral particles you inhale from them are all defective. But once you are infected, you could have a serious disease or a mild disease based on randomness -- were you dealt a good COVID hand or a bad COVID hand? Plus, COVID is continually mutating, it could even mutate inside your body into a worse or better strain, randomly.
Most everybody has been infected by COVID at least once by now, even if they've received all their vaccines. 99% of us survived COVID, even if we weren't vaccinated. Those who did get vaccinated may have randomly experienced side effects. Some dozens of people even died as a result of taking a COVID vaccine. But your chances of dying from COVID are roughly 10,000x your chances of dying from a COVID vaccine.
The random distribution of COVID deaths means that some people know a lot of folks who died from COVID, while others don't know anybody who died from COVID. The random distribution of side effects from vaccines means some people know folks who had serious side effects, while others don't know anybody who had serious side effects. There's also the randomness of -- you might have just had a COVID shot, and now you randomly experienced a serious medical problem that was completely unrelated to the COVID shot.
All of this randomness means we have a significant portion of the population who feel from their personal experience that COVID was bullshit, while the COVID vaccines were harmful. It's as though when getting dealt COVID they and their friends all got good hands, but while getting dealt COVID shots they and their friends all got bad hands. This was random, but instead of looking at the full picture, they assumed their own experiences were fair representations of reality.
A huge difference beween Magic and COVID is that there's no organized campaign to spread disinformation about Magic the Gathering hands, but there's been organized campaigns to spread disinformation about COVID and COVID vaccines. Of course, nobody dies from playing Magic, nobody gets sick from playing Magic, there's no Magic insurance, and there are no Magic vaccines -- it's just a game, not worth spreading disinformation about. With COVID, business, political, religious, criminal, and international groups had stakes in how people responded to the risks of both COVID and vaccination.
There's also a conspiratorial mindset among people who don't understand randomness. They see patterns in the randomness that simply don't mean a damn thing, but they don't have the sophisticated understanding of statistics to tell the difference between significant patterns and randomness.
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This happens in a lot of other areas. For example, some people might think that, hey, Democrats ran a woman for President in 2016 and lost, and ran a woman in 2024 and lost -- looks like running a woman is a BAD idea. But when I calculated a multiple regression equation based on election data from 1968 through 2024, the sex of the candidate was not a significant variable. How many people bother to calculate a multiple regression equation when looking at the world and making their conclusions?
The world appears to operate on a "cause and effect" model, but there are so many variables causing effects at the same time, often in a random manner, that it is too easy to make incorrect conclusions about cause and effect by looking at too few causes and too few effects. A desire for certainty, and a desire to feel correct, often leads people to make and defend incorrect conclusions based on insufficient data.
Plus, people often engage in self-serving rationalizations, arguing for outcomes that benefit them personally regardless of the facts.
Everybody has cognitive limitations and cognitive biases. But we like to think that we have good working models of the world, because we like thinking we're in control of ourselves and our surroundings. But it is the willingness to be wrong that enables the ability to learn.
On Reddit, sometimes the Magic players from the online Arena will show up to complain that the online "algorithm" is biased against them, because they just drew five bad hands in a row. These complainers inevitably, and rightfully, get downvoted by the community because the law of random numbers explains that sometimes you'll get five bad hands in a row, it's just random! It's not bias.
This randomness works the same way with medicine, vaccines, and viral diseases. Viral replication is an error-prone process with lots of randomness. Over 99% of RNA virus particles are defective and cannot propagate the infection. So you could be exposed to somebody with COVID and not get infected, because the viral particles you inhale from them are all defective. But once you are infected, you could have a serious disease or a mild disease based on randomness -- were you dealt a good COVID hand or a bad COVID hand? Plus, COVID is continually mutating, it could even mutate inside your body into a worse or better strain, randomly.
Most everybody has been infected by COVID at least once by now, even if they've received all their vaccines. 99% of us survived COVID, even if we weren't vaccinated. Those who did get vaccinated may have randomly experienced side effects. Some dozens of people even died as a result of taking a COVID vaccine. But your chances of dying from COVID are roughly 10,000x your chances of dying from a COVID vaccine.
The random distribution of COVID deaths means that some people know a lot of folks who died from COVID, while others don't know anybody who died from COVID. The random distribution of side effects from vaccines means some people know folks who had serious side effects, while others don't know anybody who had serious side effects. There's also the randomness of -- you might have just had a COVID shot, and now you randomly experienced a serious medical problem that was completely unrelated to the COVID shot.
All of this randomness means we have a significant portion of the population who feel from their personal experience that COVID was bullshit, while the COVID vaccines were harmful. It's as though when getting dealt COVID they and their friends all got good hands, but while getting dealt COVID shots they and their friends all got bad hands. This was random, but instead of looking at the full picture, they assumed their own experiences were fair representations of reality.
A huge difference beween Magic and COVID is that there's no organized campaign to spread disinformation about Magic the Gathering hands, but there's been organized campaigns to spread disinformation about COVID and COVID vaccines. Of course, nobody dies from playing Magic, nobody gets sick from playing Magic, there's no Magic insurance, and there are no Magic vaccines -- it's just a game, not worth spreading disinformation about. With COVID, business, political, religious, criminal, and international groups had stakes in how people responded to the risks of both COVID and vaccination.
There's also a conspiratorial mindset among people who don't understand randomness. They see patterns in the randomness that simply don't mean a damn thing, but they don't have the sophisticated understanding of statistics to tell the difference between significant patterns and randomness.
-----
This happens in a lot of other areas. For example, some people might think that, hey, Democrats ran a woman for President in 2016 and lost, and ran a woman in 2024 and lost -- looks like running a woman is a BAD idea. But when I calculated a multiple regression equation based on election data from 1968 through 2024, the sex of the candidate was not a significant variable. How many people bother to calculate a multiple regression equation when looking at the world and making their conclusions?
The world appears to operate on a "cause and effect" model, but there are so many variables causing effects at the same time, often in a random manner, that it is too easy to make incorrect conclusions about cause and effect by looking at too few causes and too few effects. A desire for certainty, and a desire to feel correct, often leads people to make and defend incorrect conclusions based on insufficient data.
Plus, people often engage in self-serving rationalizations, arguing for outcomes that benefit them personally regardless of the facts.
Everybody has cognitive limitations and cognitive biases. But we like to think that we have good working models of the world, because we like thinking we're in control of ourselves and our surroundings. But it is the willingness to be wrong that enables the ability to learn.