This effort to explain life through the recognition of patterns—and thus to come up with winning formulas—is complicated, in large part, because we live in a world that is beset by randomness and in which people don’t behave the same from one instance to the next, even when they intend to. The realization that past events were largely affected by these things—and thus that future events aren’t fully predictable—is unpleasant, as it makes life less subject to anticipation, rule-making and rendering safe.
