LogFAQs > #976313645

Let's say you are in front of a magical random item generator that generates a new item completely at random once per minute, and you as the onlooker get to choose which items you keep, and which items you send away to the rubbish pile.

You spend one whole day doing this, and at the start of the next day your friend walks by and notices that you have 14 items, all of which you have talked about wanting for ages.

He asks "Hey, how you manage to get it to give you what you want? Can't be completely random if you just happened to get 14 items you really wanted."

But it turns out that the item generation was indeed really random. But the process wasn't random since you were there, selecting what you wanted. And while it looks like you made out like a bandit, you actually sent away 99% of the items that were generated.

Try as you might to convince him, he just cannot see how a random process would yield such order.