Subject:
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Re: For some Lego is a religous experience. (Was: Re: Quantifying and Classifying the LEGO Community
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 23 Apr 2003 18:16:01 GMT
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Viewed:
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2888 times
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John wrote:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler writes:
>
> > Here's another way of looking at it: how, when faced with an eerie
> > coincidence like the hypthetical bus accident, are we able to know that
> > there *is* a karmic/metaphysical/transcendent reason behind it?
>
> Sorry to be a buttinski here, but I just thought of something. What about the
> odds angle? Sometimes coincidences are too great; that is, that the odds of
> something happening a certain way are way beyond normal expectation. Say, for
> instance, the beginning of life on earth. I'm a little rusty on the numbers,
> but IIRC the odds of the events happening that led up to the creation of life
> are incomprehensible. Would such "coincidences" suggest anything intelligent
> behind them?
I suppose they can suggest it to those predisposed to believing in a Greater Being,
yes.
But when you consider the # of stars in just our galaxy, and the # of planets that
they can have (we find more and more every year, and as our technology improves,
the discoveries will increase, I'm sure), those seemingly insurmountable odds come
down to a mathematical virtual certainty in the end.
i.e., if the odds are a billion to one ("Life As We Know It" has much higher odds,
IIRC, but B:1 is easier to deal with), and there are 10 billion "cases", well, then
the odds of X happening don't matter that much, it is a virtual certainty that X
WILL happen.
Put another way, we are "X" - the reason we are here debating/discussing this is
that we are the "success" (that we are a "success" can certainly be debated
unendingly). It doesn't mean that Life As We Know It is anything special (except
the odds against it), it just means there were probably a mind-bogglingly large #
of failures that we may come upon as we reach the stars.
--
Tom Stangl
***http://www.vfaq.com/
***DSM Visual FAQ home
***http://ba.dsm.org/
***SF Bay Area DSMs
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