Questions for you:
- In what areas of your professional life do you simultaneously claim to trust people whilst implementing systems that assume they can’t be trusted – and is that contradiction justified or just habitual?
- When you implement “fairness” mechanisms (random selection processes, blind reviews, anonymous submissions), are you acknowledging genuine randomness or just creating theatre to satisfy expectations of fairness?
- Do you have modern equivalents of “dice jails” – superstitious rituals you perform around random events despite intellectually knowing they have no effect?
- If ancient Romans needed dice towers to ensure fair randomness despite believing in Fortune, what does that tell you about the gap between stated beliefs and actual behaviour in decision-making?
Organisational applications:
Trust versus verification systems: Like Romans who believed in Fortune but built dice towers, organisations often simultaneously claim to trust employees whilst implementing elaborate monitoring systems. The contradiction reveals actual beliefs: stated trust with practical distrust. Design systems that acknowledge this honestly – implement verification where consequences matter (financial controls, safety protocols) whilst avoiding performative trust-building exercises that everyone knows mask underlying distrust.
Fairness mechanisms and transparency: Dice towers worked because the process was visible and verifiable. Modern equivalents include transparent algorithms for promotions, documented criteria for hiring, observable random selection for opportunities. The mechanism matters less than visibility – people trust processes they can observe even when outcomes disappoint them. Opaque “fair” processes generate more distrust than transparent imperfect ones.
Superstition identification in processes: “Dice jails” – playful punishments for misbehaving dice – persist despite everyone knowing dice don’t misbehave. Organisations have equivalents: rituals around decision-making that everyone knows don’t affect outcomes but persist because changing them feels risky. Identify these superstitious practices (lucky meeting times, mandatory presentations that nobody reads, approval chains that rubber-stamp) and question whether resources invested in ritual could be better spent.
Randomness as fairness guarantee: Ancient Greeks used kleroterion devices specifically because randomness was seen as fairer than human selection. Consider where random selection would be more equitable than merit-based approaches: jury duty, compliance audits, performance review panels, and committee assignments. Randomness eliminates bias and favouritism more effectively than attempts at objective evaluation in contexts where genuine merit differences are small or unmeasurable.
Further reading
Historical gambling, dice, and randomness
The Oxford History of Board Games by David Parlett – history of games including discussion of dice manipulation and anti-cheating devices, explaining why dice towers emerged despite belief that Fortune controlled outcomes.
Roll the Bones by David G. Schwartz – comprehensive history of gambling demonstrating persistent tension between trusting random outcomes and suspecting manipulation, showing dice towers as early recognition of this conflict.
Against the Gods by Peter L. Bernstein – traces development of probability theory and risk management, including discussion of how gambling devices like dice towers represented practical acknowledgment that randomness could be mechanical rather than divine.
Belief versus behaviour contradictions
The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer – examines how people form beliefs and maintain them despite contradictory behaviour, relevant to understanding why Romans built dice towers whilst professing belief in Fortune.
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson – explores cognitive dissonance and how people reconcile contradictory beliefs and behaviours, explaining the persistence of superstitious practices alongside rational systems.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman – demonstrates systematic gaps between stated beliefs and actual behaviour under uncertainty, showing people often act as though they distrust randomness even whilst claiming to accept it.
Superstition, ritual, and modern equivalents
The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman – research on luck beliefs and behaviours showing people maintain rituals and superstitions around random events whilst simultaneously implementing rational control mechanisms, paralleling Roman dice tower contradiction.
Supersense by Bruce Hood – cognitive scientist’s explanation of why superstitious behaviour persists even among people who intellectually reject supernatural causation, relevant to understanding dice jails and modern equivalents.
About the image
Photo montage by Matt Ballantine, 2026
Random the Book 
