Misconceptions of randomness

Biological Parallel

Trees in forests appear evenly spaced—competition creates regular distributions through allelopathy and crown shyness. Animals expect similar spacing in random sequences: humans judge 'HHTHTTHT' as more random than 'HTHHHTHTT' despite equal probability, rejecting sequences with clusters as 'rigged.' But truly random distributions produce clumping: raindrops on pavement cluster by Poisson statistics, mutations cluster along DNA creating hotspots, deer tick encounters cluster creating Lyme disease hotspots. Spotify removed true randomness from 'shuffle' because users complained about artist clusters—the mathematical reality violated spatial intuitions tuned for competitive exclusion and territorial spacing where clustering indicates non-random processes.