Fascinating post. I especially like the observation that the purpose of randomness in all these examples is to defeat intelligence. It seems that this is indeed the purpose for nearly every use of randomness that I can think of. We randomise presidents routes to defeat the intelligence of an assasin, a casino randomises its roulette wheels to defeat the intelligence of the gambler. Even in sampling, we randomise our sample to defeat our own intelligence, which we need to treat as hostile for the purpose of the experiment.
Fascinating post. I especially like the observation that the purpose of randomness in all these examples is to defeat intelligence. It seems that this is indeed the purpose for nearly every use of randomness that I can think of. We randomise presidents routes to defeat the intelligence of an assasin, a casino randomises its roulette wheels to defeat the intelligence of the gambler. Even in sampling, we randomise our sample to defeat our own intelligence, which we need to treat as hostile for the purpose of the experiment.