## What are examples for extremely small probabilities?

* Author: u/None *
* URL: 
* Score: 2

* Created: 2015-07-19T20:54:17

### Post:

[deleted]

### Comments:

> **u/Chronophilia** [+9]  *sci-fi ≠ futurology* (an hour later)
> 
> Odds of winning the jackpot at the Lotto: 1/13,983,816.
> 
> Odds of winning the jackpot at the Lotto every draw for a year (the draws are twice a week): about 10^(-745).
> 
> Okay, that's a bit low. (Edit: I dropped a logarithm somewhere, so this comment used to give a slightly more humanly relatable result. It's correct now.)

> **u/enfrozennard** [+5]  (5 hours later)
> 
> You could always conjunct independent events till you get the right prob. For instance, the probability of flipping 70 heads in a row on a fair coin is about 10^-20

> **u/redrach** [+3]  (3 hours later)
> 
> How about quantum tunneling at the macroscopic level? There's a finite non-zero probability that all the atoms making you up would suddenly end up a foot to the left of their current position. Or a light year.

>> **u/Solonarv** [+7]  *Chaos Legion* (9 hours later)
>> 
>> And a much higher probability  (though still very small) that they end up in a configuration that isn't "you" at all.

>>> **u/holomanga** [+2]  (17 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Oh geez thanks for terrifying me

>> **u/nerdguy1138** [+3]  *GNU Terry Pratchett* (13 hours later)
>> 
>> there's a fun short story called gravity mine. Civilization during the degenerate era. Eventually the protagonist finds a naked quantum singularity, slows herself down, and just waits. Given enough time, complexity will emerge from the noise.
>> 
>> Drabblecast podcast gravity mine.
>> 
>> Also, royal flush = 1 in 40 million, or something like that.

> **u/Kishoto** [+2]  (2 minutes later)
> 
> I don't have the math. But you. Your existence. Is the result of an extremely small probabilty. And I don't mean that in the "You're a special snowflake" way. I mean that in the "Holy shit, the number of variables that had to coincide perfectly to give rise to the human race is ridiculously huge" :)

>> **u/None** [+3]  (15 hours later)
>> 
>> > I mean that in the "Holy shit, the number of variables that had to coincide perfectly to give rise to the human race is ridiculously huge" :)
>> 
>> Evolution is an optimization process.  The probability is only ultra-low as a *prior*, *before* you take the optimization into account.  Once you do that, the probability of *something roughly like us* existing somewhere, somewhen in the universe is... pretty high, I'd guesstimate.

>>> **u/Kishoto** [+1]  (18 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Probability of it existing somewhere? Sure, I can accept that number being higher. But as to it happening at a specific point in space? The probability is unlikely to say the least. Like if you went on a beach to pick up a grain of sand, the probability is high that you will have a grain of sand in your hand. But the probability of you picking up a specific grain is ridiculously low

>>>> **u/None** [+2]  (20 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> Sure, but anthropically speaking, we care about the existence proposition, not the specific location.

>> **u/The_Serious_Account** [+1]  (10 minutes later)
>> 
>> On the other hand, the probability of OP existing is clearly 1.

>>> **u/xamueljones** [+7]  *My arch-enemy is entropy* (6 hours later)
>>> 
>>> You sure? I know a couple of ways where OP doesn't exist.
>>> 
>>> * Improbable server glitch to make a post with relevant information to this subreddit.
>>> 
>>> * A virus going around and creating posts. While writing this post may seem likely to be sign of an intelligent AI, I can imagine a strange programmer combing multiple texts on statistics with a very good text analysis to create relevant posts. It'd be hard and blurs the line between sophisticated program and AI, but I think it's possible.
>>> 
>>> * A cat got on someone's key board and randomly pressed keys in a very strange pattern. Seriously, I've seen a cat sit in front of a computer and press a *single* key at a time.
>>> 
>>> There's always alternate explanations. The question is whether or not they're likely enough to bother considering.

>>>> **u/forrestib** [+2]  *Project Freelancer* (7 days later)
>>>> 
>>>> Can someone actually calculate the probability of a cat randomly typing the above post one key at a time? That seems like an adequately low probability event to put some things into perspective.

> **u/ancientcampus** [+2]  *juggling kittens* (20 hours later)
> 
> https://what-if.xkcd.com/19/
> 
> XKCD examines the odds of there being a literal tie in the US election. It's worth reading the last few lines at minimum.

> **u/None** [-1]  (23 hours later)
> 
> Young-Earth Creationism is true.

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