colonel@gloria.UUCP (05/06/84)
[Why isn't this going on in net.origins?] This discussion of probabilities seems rather naive. The probability of a meteorite's striking your house may be very small, but if you find a hole in your roof and a meteorite in your bathtub, the probability becomes very high. To put it generally, a-posteriori probabilities are meaningful only with respect to the current data. The probability of mankind's developing spontaneously in a lifeless universe, GIVEN THAT WE HAVE DONE SO, is 1. What both creationists and evolutionists appear to overlook is the statistical principle that I first encountered in Kasner and Newman's _Mathematics and the Imagination_: "Probabilities mean nothing with respect to a single case." To ignore this reduces Creationism to disbelief in reality, and Evolutionism to a proof that we probably don't exist. -- Col. G. L. Sicherman ...seismo!rochester!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel