4.4 KiB
What are examples for extremely small probabilities?
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Author: u/None *
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URL:
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Score: 0
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Created: 2015-07-19T20:54:17
Post:
[deleted]
Comments:
u/Chronophilia [+8] sci-fi ≠ futurology*
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] *
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 [+4] *
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*
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] *
Oh geez thanks for terrifying me
u/nerdguy1138 [+3] GNU Terry Pratchett*
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 [+3] *
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] *
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] *
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] *
Sure, but anthropically speaking, we care about the existence proposition, not the specific location.
u/The_Serious_Account [+1] *
On the other hand, the probability of OP existing is clearly 1.
u/xamueljones [+8] My arch-enemy is entropy*
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*
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*
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] *
Young-Earth Creationism is true.