Chance, Non-Linear Causation, and Flukes…
Is there a hidden Order behind our seemingly random choices?
Hello Orderers… Although this substack is only a couple of weeks old… it has been exactly six months since the Disorder podcast launched and as fate, or chance, or the predestination of the universe would have it for our semi-anniversary episode, we were honoured to be rejoined by our very first guest from episode 1, the very man who inspired me to launch this podcast: Brian Klaas. And while chatting with Brian on the pod we delved into into the philosophical ideas behind Brian’s new book Fluke, which has quite a lot to say about whether our lives are just a series of random events and whether the cosmos or international system can every truly be ordered.
Does God Play Dice with the Universe?
In the conversation, Brian and I agree disagreeably about the following issues: do most people believe that good things happen to good people, that one’s lot in life is somehow earned, and that ‘things happen for a reason’? Can some disorder be good in our personal lives? Is Order a spiritual rather than a rational or evolutionary virtue? Can we ever truly achieve Order in the international system? Or is life itself just a deterministic jumble of uncontrollable events? Do humans crave order so much that they perceive it even when it is absent – leading to conspiracy theories? And should policymakers avoid optimization and prediction and embrace experimentation, resilience, and slack to fix the problems of our era of Global Enduring Disorder?
Listen here to our conversation.
In it we zoom out to 100 thousand feet to examine what constitutes order and disorder in our lives and in the universe… Brian has been quite pivotal in my own professional and intellectual development and he and I see the world quite similarly in many ways. We largely agree about the origins and implications of neopopulism on global order, we definitely agree about the myriad ways in which authoritarians imitate each other’s strategies, we mostly agree about America’s critical role in upholding a rules based international system. Brian and I also have another very profound commonality… on what is appropriate podcasting attire: it is apparently red and black flannel!!
In addition to various sartorial choices, we certainly agree that Sliding Doors is a great movie and an apt metaphor for how life actually works, and we most crucially agree that ‘Everything doesn’t happen for a reason’ neither my ACL injury or Trump’s election both intrinsically grasping the role of chance and flukes in human affairs, especially at the individual level is critical.
MY OWN SLIDING DOORS
The Sliding Doors version of life certainly resonates with me: I wouldn’t be studying the Middle East if my parents didn’t take a specific vacation in late 1990s and then if the 9/11 didn’t happen my senior year of college. If I had been one year older and had graduated before the 9/11 had happened I would likely have stuck with biochemistry. If I didn’t reach out to a certain friend for career advice (thanks a lot Blatteis!) before I started Oxford my first time around I would never have been put in touch with the consulting firm that recruited me to work in Libya and then didn’t pay me and caused me to lose my graduate school spot, launching my career in consultancy, Trade Associations, and US-Libya and UK-Libya business ties… and from there as Goalhanger says The rest has been history.
But yeah aside from all that boring agreement on those big picture questions of how our lives have played out, Brian and I have a decade plus track record of disagreeing agreeably on issues from the Minnesota Vikings, to small town America, to politically correctness, to Ron DeSantis, and Gaza.. now due to Brian’s dazzling new book Fluke our penchant for intellectual debates can extend to a new domain entirely, the role of chance, luck and free will in human affairs and the cosmos.
Brian and I share a deep curiosity for the world around us, but he has truly lived out Nietzsche’s dictum that one should live in a manner such that no aspect of human affairs rest outside of one’s concern and direct experience. I may be misquoting this hear but I think it comes from La Gaya Scienza and I was turned on to this book by my old mentor Martin Van Creveld who has also completely shaped my professional and philosophical trajectory and I can’t wait to have on the pod sometime soon.
Well speaking of existentialism:
Brian highlights the gaps in human sensory perception and our ability to reason and our desire to tell stories, create spirituality and meaning from the world around us. Put briefly I would say the main thesis of Fluke is quite existentialist as it follows the same conundrum that Camus and Sartre put forward nearly a century ago which is that man craves justice, predictability, order, reason, and sense and is confronted with a random and unfeeling universe… and the confrontation btw those two things produces the absurd. You can say that the human brain distorts reality to find patterns and meaning, even where none exists. And that we are a story telling creature and that we engage in synaptic pruning to just focus in on the data that allows us to find order and reason and meaning and purpose. Existentialists would have simply labelled the same phenomenon as consciousness craving order and the new atheists would call this the God Delusion…..
If this train of thought intrigues you even in the slightest, I think you’ll really enjoy our episode with Brian so please listen here.
For more on Brian:
Pick up Fluke by visiting - https://brianpklaas.com/fluke
For more of Brian’s writing visit -
For a great audio overview of the thesis of the book rather than my rambling philosophical discussion of its implications for the enduring disorder idea: https://www.npr.org/2026/01/01/1198916034/brian-klaas-on-chance-chaos-and-why-everything-we-do-matters
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