msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) (08/22/85)
Fred Mendenhall (fred@inuxe.UUCP) writes: > "Page estimates that the chances of 'The Creator sticking > in a pin' and pulling out just this combination of qualities > that makes such a unique universe are way beyond > astronomical, 1 in (10,000,000,000)^124." > > Such a statement tends to increase the entropy in my head. Oh come on, events much rarer than that happen all the time in duplicate bridge. Look, the number of possible deals is 52!/(13!)^4, right? That's 53644737765488792839237440000, if I didn't make a typo in bc. If just two 28-board sessions are played, you're seeing an event with a probability that is that number to the 56th power, or roughly 2.67 x 10^1568. That beats your 10^1240 by 328 orders of magnitude. The point is, rare events are only interesting if they don't fall into families of equally rare events -- if they can be distinguished qualitatively, say. For instance, staying with bridge, a "perfect deal" would be a notable rare event; a typical deal is an equally rare event, but not notable. If conclusions are to be drawn from that number 10^1240, the first requirement is to demonstrate that this universe is in fact qualitatively different from the other 10^1240 or so. If it isn't, the number is a red herring. (I haven't read the thing Fred was quoting, and if the original author did in fact put forth persuasive arguments, I retract my implication that they were being silly.) Mark Brader