Author: Roy Eassa
Date: 15:49:58 02/02/02
Go up one level in this thread
On February 02, 2002 at 00:59:52, Dann Corbit wrote: >All events have some randomness associated with them. A light switch -- we flip >it on and the light goes on (maybe). Maybe the switch goes bad (quite unlikely, >but I had it happen in my house). Maybe the bulb burns out or is burned out. >Maybe the power goes off right at that instant. Probably -- it goes on. But >before the event has occurred or not occurred we really don't know which it will >be (or something else altogether unplanned: There is no lightbulb in the >socket). > >Not only do I think that our events are not predetermined, I think that >(paraphrasing a wise saying): >"Unforseen circumstances happen to us all." Many of the people with whom I interact react to any low-probability event with statements like "that's proof that God exists!" or "that's a real miracle!" I sometimes say something like "since trillions of events occur every day, even one-in-a-billion events are not infrequent," but of course I am wasting my breath. Once a person is beyond a certain age, they are not likely (there I go again) to begin seeing things in a probabilistic way.
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