<div style='font: 10pt ; text-align: left; '>Hey there, I used to post here as Dyne, or Seishirou, or variants of those two a few years back. Just wanted to say hello.
Barret, whats up!
One more thing, I'm not sure if anyone remembers this, but there was a discussion about the NYC lottery number picks turning out to be 911 on some sort of significant aniversry date of the bombings or whatever. Sine pointed out that it seemed to be a little fishy and everybody jumped on his ass with probabilities and called him retarded and such. Anyway all you math nerds, Sine was right to be skeptical, it turns out that there are some interesting logical arguments that would have worked way in his favor, if you can believe it. It isn't on the internet so I'll just give a brief description.
It goes back to the cosmological argument for and against the existance of god. For: The requirements needed for our universe to produce conditions for life to evolve are so astronomically improbable to occur together that the fact that that live exists implies that the universe was created along the lines of an ordering priciple, and that ordering principle is the Christian god. Against: Just good luck, universe collapsed and expanded many times before our universe came into existence, multiverse, etc.
As you can see, the cosmological argument for the existence of god isn't very good. But one of the arguments supporting is the one that would have helped Sine. It's called the merchant's thumb principle. A merchant is trying to sell you a piece of silk with a hole in it at a retail price. As the merchant shows you the fabric, he's covering the hole with his thumb. You buy the silk, notice the hole, and return to the merchant to get your money back. The merchant says, "If you look at the situation in terms of probability, I was just as likely to put my thumb anywhere else on the fabric, it just so happens that it was covering up the hole." Its like a poker player getting 5 royal flushes in a row and expecting people not to call him a cheat. The logic goes that probablities may be discarded if there is a rational reason to do so.
There you go Sine, if you remember that far back I hope this makes you feel better. For some reason that's been bugging me when I really shouldn't have given two shits about it.
peace</div>
Barret, whats up!
One more thing, I'm not sure if anyone remembers this, but there was a discussion about the NYC lottery number picks turning out to be 911 on some sort of significant aniversry date of the bombings or whatever. Sine pointed out that it seemed to be a little fishy and everybody jumped on his ass with probabilities and called him retarded and such. Anyway all you math nerds, Sine was right to be skeptical, it turns out that there are some interesting logical arguments that would have worked way in his favor, if you can believe it. It isn't on the internet so I'll just give a brief description.
It goes back to the cosmological argument for and against the existance of god. For: The requirements needed for our universe to produce conditions for life to evolve are so astronomically improbable to occur together that the fact that that live exists implies that the universe was created along the lines of an ordering priciple, and that ordering principle is the Christian god. Against: Just good luck, universe collapsed and expanded many times before our universe came into existence, multiverse, etc.
As you can see, the cosmological argument for the existence of god isn't very good. But one of the arguments supporting is the one that would have helped Sine. It's called the merchant's thumb principle. A merchant is trying to sell you a piece of silk with a hole in it at a retail price. As the merchant shows you the fabric, he's covering the hole with his thumb. You buy the silk, notice the hole, and return to the merchant to get your money back. The merchant says, "If you look at the situation in terms of probability, I was just as likely to put my thumb anywhere else on the fabric, it just so happens that it was covering up the hole." Its like a poker player getting 5 royal flushes in a row and expecting people not to call him a cheat. The logic goes that probablities may be discarded if there is a rational reason to do so.
There you go Sine, if you remember that far back I hope this makes you feel better. For some reason that's been bugging me when I really shouldn't have given two shits about it.
peace</div>
