[urbleflan]

Taleb has some good comments about this, which is that just as you can make a prediction and have it come true by pure chance, we can view evidence from history and fit a pattern to it (even though that pattern occurred only by chance). Personally I think the best way to view history is as a series of poorly controlled experiments. As with scientific experiments, the evidence may be suggestive of some pattern, but we should embrace an attitude of skepticism and openness to counterexamples. The patterns we see may tend towards "laws," but we should assume some level of imperfect resolution and control and therefore associate a confidence percentage with our inferences.

[friendlybus]

You can line any reasoning up against chance. Theres a chance that the sun will rise tomorrow. Measuring a prediction against chance says nothing for the validity of the knowledge or structures you used to build that prediction.

People have to build paths through life that span years and decades, one does not need chance or randomness to know those plans might fail.