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97 lines
4.6 KiB
Markdown
97 lines
4.6 KiB
Markdown
## What are examples for extremely small probabilities?
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* Author: u/None *
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* URL:
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* Score: 2
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* Created: 2015-07-19T20:54:17
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### Post:
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[deleted]
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### Comments:
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> **u/Chronophilia** [+9] *sci-fi ≠ futurology* (an hour later)
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>
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> Odds of winning the jackpot at the Lotto: 1/13,983,816.
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>
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> Odds of winning the jackpot at the Lotto every draw for a year (the draws are twice a week): about 10^(-745).
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>
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> 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.)
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> **u/enfrozennard** [+5] (5 hours later)
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>
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> 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
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> **u/redrach** [+3] (3 hours later)
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>
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> 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.
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>> **u/Solonarv** [+7] *Chaos Legion* (9 hours later)
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>>
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>> And a much higher probability (though still very small) that they end up in a configuration that isn't "you" at all.
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>>> **u/holomanga** [+2] (17 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> Oh geez thanks for terrifying me
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>> **u/nerdguy1138** [+3] *GNU Terry Pratchett* (13 hours later)
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>>
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>> 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.
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>>
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>> Drabblecast podcast gravity mine.
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>>
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>> Also, royal flush = 1 in 40 million, or something like that.
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> **u/Kishoto** [+2] (2 minutes later)
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>
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> 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" :)
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>> **u/None** [+3] (15 hours later)
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>>
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>> > 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" :)
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>>
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>> 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.
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>>> **u/Kishoto** [+1] (18 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> 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
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>>>> **u/None** [+2] (20 hours later)
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>>>>
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>>>> Sure, but anthropically speaking, we care about the existence proposition, not the specific location.
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>> **u/The_Serious_Account** [+1] (10 minutes later)
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>>
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>> On the other hand, the probability of OP existing is clearly 1.
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>>> **u/xamueljones** [+7] *My arch-enemy is entropy* (6 hours later)
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>>>
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>>> You sure? I know a couple of ways where OP doesn't exist.
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>>>
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>>> * Improbable server glitch to make a post with relevant information to this subreddit.
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>>>
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>>> * 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.
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>>>
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>>> * 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.
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>>>
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>>> There's always alternate explanations. The question is whether or not they're likely enough to bother considering.
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>>>> **u/forrestib** [+2] *Project Freelancer* (7 days later)
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>>>>
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>>>> 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.
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> **u/ancientcampus** [+2] *juggling kittens* (20 hours later)
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>
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> https://what-if.xkcd.com/19/
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>
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> XKCD examines the odds of there being a literal tie in the US election. It's worth reading the last few lines at minimum.
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> **u/None** [-1] (23 hours later)
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>
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> Young-Earth Creationism is true.
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---
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