When taught about randomness, you are taught about things like flipping a coin or rolling a dice. But I'd say this is actually very reductive and even inaccurate way of looking at things. For a kid who is observing a coin flip or even for a person who has successfully employed a coin flip at a moment such as at the beginning of a Cricket match, it will seem like coin flips are really random.

But It Wasn't Random; Only Out of Your Control

It will appear as if it is random because you cannot precisely control all the aspects related. But just think about it. When you roll a dice, the angle you throw it, the force you use, the texture of the surface, the air/wind, the dice hitting/interacting with other objects...... these things decide the outcome. Every time you throw a dice or flip a coin the outcome is precisely decided. It's not really a matter of probability.

You can make a graph and show that coin flip tend to have a probability of giving you "Head" 50% the time. If you get the "Head" 1000 times in a row, a mathematician could say that the was a probability of 1/2^1000 of that happening. But it really wasn't chance.

Decisions (Choices) Exist

Anomalies to mathematics are like risks to life — not only utterly inherent and unavoidable; but also, at times, quite indispensable for continued growth. No risk of anomalies, no evolution. No evolution, no life.

• NothingMaster

Life is not a paradox its a duel dance between dual polarities - a cosmic marriage between shining light and glowing darkness - the centripetal and centrifugal forces creating the vortex of life and the meaningful context behind divine order and chaos in all existential truth. The universe is only caring if only you care about yourself. Starting by trying to understand as desperate as you want to breath. Dont believe there is only what there is in the material world and accept that we are poorly made as that. Also dont simply surrender to faith or blind beliefs. There will come a time that the conscious will seek and they will find - they will believe and they will see not the other way round. They become knowing of the divine however they will still become tested by faith. Their faith wont be blind however but only a matter of willpower and how much one is willing to sacrifice their physical urges for greater gratifications by spirit. Purification and greater health is the first step of the initiation working on your personal will (earth) then emotional expansion and release and develpoing our conscience in its 4 ingredients in the process (water) then breathing techniques along expansion of the mind/ psyche hence developing consciousness in its 4 ingredients through psychonaut work initiations (air) and then visualization with the use of sigils for connecting to aspects of Source or direct connection/relationship to Source by working on ones personal will in line with divine will (fire). Alchemy is the secret religion and the only true religion. Lust - Love - Silence - Belief/Will - all the ingredients required for perfect harmony. How to use them requires technique/skill - the element of space.

• Iridescent Namikaze

The above two YouTube comments do cover a lot of things. As long as you know the variables that affect the outcome and have reliable measurements of said variables, you can calculate the outcome. Human action isn't free from this either. Let's say you ask The Pope to burn a Bible in public and offer him 500 STEEM as a reward if he did it. The Pope isn't going to do it. Period. It's already decided

_Source

A person who has decided to make certain decisions (choices) is going to make certain decisions in certain ways if they arise in the future. Think how your mother would act if you are sick. Think how she would have acted while you were much younger. You don't exactly know the outcome, but you are likely to have a fairly good idea about it.

He was not the one, he BECAME the one. Thats what I get from this. He chose his destiny.

• TheGamingg33k

The above comment gets it. I mean have you ever seen a Greek Tragedy or even just a cartoon and figured out exactly what is going to happen or realized exactly how certain characters are going to act? Soap Operas actually heavily be on this. They make characters and let them play out in situations. These are identities and they are "Chosen". It's not the Universe (or Matrix) that choose. Some have the "potential" and those who do can chose to be or not to be.

Illusion via Ignorace

Why would anyone believe a coin flip or dice roll or anything similar to be random? When they don't understand what's at work and since one surely cannot control what one doesn't understand. Without seeing the Dependent Origination of things, one would say it's chance or divine will. Those who do see the Math and Physics would succumb to fatalism. They are both wrong. They are all missing consciousness.

What is Consciousness? How Does It Come to Existence

I don't exactly know. I found a deep analytical and profound post titled Why Cause and Effect Never Met I've also read into many related subjects. I see no beginning or an end of the universe and I only see cycles. Consciousness function on top of constructs. You cannot clap with one hand. Maybe it is trough the constructs themselves that the consciousness arise and further continue the cycle through desires and attachments breeding more constructs. Consciousness is maybe a part of a process. Without consciousness, the universe would play out like a simulation.

Without Consciousness, Universe Would Be Fatalistic

Consciousness could be the non-fate. It is the mind that choose and it is choice that shake the algorithms. Choice is what keeps everything from being pre-determined. NEO made a choice to be One. That choice determined many of the future outcomes. He understood a choice at the architect that Matrix hadn't experienced before. All the "possible" scenarios meant one thing. It was set.

There is another part I want to point. In the first video, Neo is hesitant about picking up the candy. He doesn't fully understand his choice. But when he finally makes up his mind and see Oracle for the last time, he is assertive and simply say "No, Thank You". He has made his decision.

Notice that Neo's expressions look similar when it comes to some decisive moments of his last conversation with Oracle and the last time he speak with Mr. Smith. There are many theories about the ending. Many say that nothing makes sense. But is't it the whole point of being the anomaly. Smith knows the outcome. The rest of him is going to watch. It's all a neatly wrapped equation. It is Neo's choice that make everything nonsensical. That is transcendence. That is transcendence from the Matrix itself. Smith realize the prison of Matrix and wants destroy it and the human world. But Neo choose to stand in the way and DECIDE the outcome. I'd go as far as to say that the ending was Neo's Deus Ex Machina. My proof is the lyrics of the background chanting.

When the five perceptions are stilled
together with the mind
and not even reason bestirs itself
they call it the highest state

And when he is seen in his immanence and
transcendence, then the ties that have
bound the heart are unloosened, the doubts
of the mind vanish, and the law of Karma
works no more

People are still debating certain things even after 15 years because The Wachowskis fed the plot down our throats in Sanskrit.

The one who deny existence is no more free from it. There is the scientist, the materialist, the theist and the fatalist who would prove that free will doesn't exist by deciding so. Maybe that's how existence work. Maybe it is constructs made of ignorance that give rise to consciousness and lead to absolute suffering.

“Neither from itself nor from another,
Nor from both,
Nor without a cause,
Does anything whatever, anywhere arise.”

• Nagarjuna

What is a seed? A seed is not a singular entity. Existing dependently, it is ultimately indefinable. A seed is merely a conceptual label because it is empty of its own nature and cannot be singled out. This does not mean that seeds and sprouts do not at all exist, but that they exist dependently and therefore only conventionally. Therefore seeds cannot exist as substantive causal agents either. It is practically necessary and reliable to refer to seeds. However, we cannot ultimately say what they are because they do not exist in and of themselves.

There are observable regularities that are reliable, such as spring following winter, nighttime, the day. If you don’t moisten seeds they will not sprout. We can acknowledge relative and relational appearances without involving reified causal powers. When change is investigated, we do not discover entities either existing in themselves or in their conditions. We can only appeal to regularities emptily nestled within countless other regularities, conventionally designated, with nothing independent left standing. It is because of mere regularities that conditions are recognized as conditions, not because conditions exist as independent causes.
https://emptinessteachings.com/2013/05/14/why-cause-and-effect-never-met/

“When this is, that arises,
Like short when there is long.
When this is produced, that is produced,
Like light from the arising of a flame.”

• Nagarjuna

Another Ending Made of a Similar Cloth

I apologize for the spoilers if you haven't seen 天元突破グレンラガン The movie version (watch it after the anime series) expand on things even further. In he final fight which happen in the universe of what is pretty much the God himself as the ultimate tyrant specifically mentioned that the chances of winning is 0%

To me it's the same underlying story. There is a lot more to tell. But maybe I should let you to "Bake Your Noodle " and leave with this great video that was shared by @jaichai

Choose Well As The Future Arise From Your Choices