Favorite Anything

you may have a point. random is more spontaneous than amv's, though you can have a random part in an amv. like if you do one about a really gory anime and at some point put in a scene from a happy children's show. I dont know, just them thoughts

That is not random. Random would be with no prior intention, and completely arbitrariliy selected from, say a hat with various scenes written on pieces of paper. If there was any intentional selection at all, then it is not random. You seem to be using the word to mean incoherent with other material involved or something. Is that what they mean? Unexpected? Apparently unrelated to the other material involved?

Well, Im no expert with definitions, but from my experience of playing online games and watching animes. Many people do use the word to express that certain something was unexpected, or was irrelevent to the material the person was involved with. However i wouldnt really trust my own words... im only taking a guess from the experience i gained.

That does seem to jive with how I've heard the word expressed. I'm going to assume that is what they mean. Though, for the record, when something is comical, and done in such a vine, it is refered to a s "comedy non sequitur". To give an example (one from Jon Stewart): The war in iraq has cased billions of dollars, do you consider a unicycle to be a piece of furniture?

Since people define words, random means something completely out of topic/category, unexpected, and it sometimes means weird. But it's best described as something undescribeable, unpredictable, something lacking statistical correlation. But take the first three answers since you're asking what the kids of today mean by it.

I know that they're using it differently than how it is defined, or how I know of it. Thus my question, and this topic. I don't know what you mean by "lacking statistical correlation". That isn't very specific. Apples lack statistical correlation, are they "random"?

No, I guess apples can't be "random". What I meant to say by "lacking statistical correlation" is that random usually means equally probable. Like the outcome of a dice will always be random with the outcome being unpredictable. But seriously, did you have to use apples?

Random things are predictable. Often quite accurately. Random is just something happening without selection or intent. Like the mutations of animal genomes. It is entirely random, but it has a huge statistical correlation. Using this they can accurately date the divergence of certain species. The average person has has three random mutations during developement, these account for our unique genes. A dice roll also has a huge statistical correlation, despite being completely random. Say you have a 6 sided die, this means that it has a one in six chance of resting on either side when rolled. This is easily predictable. Also, the more the roll the die, the smaller the actual statistics will be divergant from the predicted one.

For instance, even though the die has a 1 in 6 chance of rolling on one side, if you roll the die ten times, you have have gotten one side say 4 times. Clearly this does no jive with your prediction. Roll the die more, 100 times, it will be closer to your prediction, but not exact. Roll it 1000 times, closer still. probably at about 10 thousand would be where the actual states precisely match your prediction.

I picked apples, by the way, because I used a style of argumentation (which I greatly favor, because it works and suits my personality) called a "reductio ad absurdum" which is latin for "reduction to the absurd". What you do is take the reasoning you were presented with, and demonstrate that absurd conclusions can be drawn from it, demonstrating that there must be something wrong with the reasoning. Even if I haven't really demonstrated what the problem is. It is important that the example I present will be something we both can agree is absurd. This style sometimes backfires and leads people to believe that you are making an argument by analogy, and calling the specifics of their argument absurd, when you are not, merely the reasoning.