tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7583674511519808833.post4019430899341137161..comments2024-03-27T00:26:19.644+00:00Comments on Rosa Rubicondior: Randomly Refuting CreationismRosa Rubicondiorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06063268216781988588noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7583674511519808833.post-39178819021293570292012-09-05T14:39:31.307+01:002012-09-05T14:39:31.307+01:00Or, as Tim Minchin put it: "To assume that yo...Or, as Tim Minchin put it: "To assume that your one in 64 million chance thing is a miracle is to significantly underestimate the number of things there are."<br /><br />:DJimmyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15627738595302214154noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7583674511519808833.post-85641068842567298342012-08-18T14:52:12.287+01:002012-08-18T14:52:12.287+01:00Great post and great comments, interesting readGreat post and great comments, interesting readLBXhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12095973769916952515noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7583674511519808833.post-6624664687352877182012-08-15T09:34:46.281+01:002012-08-15T09:34:46.281+01:00Great post. Thanks for putting it here.
I tried ...Great post. Thanks for putting it here.<br /><br />I tried to explain something similar in <a href="http://rosarubicondior.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/why-you.html" rel="nofollow">Why You?</a> and <a href="http://rosarubicondior.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/on-probability-of-being.html" rel="nofollow">On The Probability Of Being</a><br />Rosa Rubicondiorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06063268216781988588noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7583674511519808833.post-75581831785995526612012-08-15T05:29:02.296+01:002012-08-15T05:29:02.296+01:00The lottery is a great way of showing how (and why...The lottery is a great way of showing how (and why) people fail to grasp the probabilities involved with an unlikely event happening, of having happened and why many see 'design' in things which has no need to be there.<br /><br />In a lottery with 49 numbers (as in UK) the probability of any 6 numbers coming out is about 1 in 14 million, hence the probability of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 winning is just that probability too.<br /><br />It is easy to use numbers like 14 million without understanding them: try to imagine counting off 1 number every second for just under 4 hours - congratulations you have just reached 14,000, now repeat this 999 more times! In fact you need to count one number every single second non-stop for 162 days to reach 14 million!<br /><br />The probability of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 coming out in that exact order is massively bigger too - in fact 1 in just over 10 billion. If you had celebrated the wedding of King Henry III of England to Eleanor of Provence in the year 1236 by counting seconds you still wouldn't be at 10 billion today!<br /><br />Try asking someone who plays the lottery to change their numbers to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6: you'll find most people won't as it seems crazy that this ordered pattern would come up by random chance. But you can be sure they'll still go and pay their money to place 6 (seemingly) random numbers despite these having just the same chance - 99% of people who actually play the lottery just doesn't understand the probabilities.<br /><br />I doubt anybody would play if the only way of winning was for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 to come out in EXACTLY that order, but, and here's the twist, imagine somebody who has backed that happening AND WON. The probability of the event occuring is still worse than 1 in 10 billion but since someone is sitting there with a bank account full of money that means the probability it HAS happened is 100%. To our winner the concept that this was random will be almost unbelievable - rather than dealing with numbers big enough to require over 750 years of non-stop counting to reach it will seem more feasible to think that there is some order or meaning to what has happened, that somebody controlled, designed, it to come out this way.<br /><br />This is the trap 'creationists' fall into - or, more cynically, the perceived 'gap' they use to hide their alternative in. The problem is that our 'lottery winner' above would be wrong to assume that somebody fixed the draw just because they happened to win; any suggestion of 'design' would need its own independent mechanisms and evidence. And the improbability of random chance changes in a universe that is so vast that this lottery is taking place a huge number of times too - once our hypothetical lottery above has happened around 7 billion times there is more than a 50/50 chance that someone will have seen 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 come out sequentially, despite the staggering improbability of it actually happening in any single draw.<br /><br />The improbability of one hypothesis being true does NOT increase the chances of any other theory being correct. Believers in a universe created by God need to actually come up with some hard data of their own for the mechanism of how their theory works and stop just clinging to the amazing improbabilities of abiogenesis and evolution. 'Creationists' seem to think that because we're stood on the battlefield with what appears to be a very delicate weapon they win the argument by default and can just stand shouting abuse from the safety of their church without any weapon at all!<br /><br />Apologies for any incoherent rambling sections in this that don't match up to your always excellently written articles Rosa - I am a mathematician after all! Please feel free to edit, steal, and/or re-use any of the above in the great work you do trying to expose the myths of religion.Andyhttps://twitter.com/sheffield_andynoreply@blogger.com