Re: What would make you believe?

On Sat, 09 Feb 2008 23:41:45 -0600, Wildepad <noreplies> wrote:

>A tall young man comes to your door. He speaks with a heavy accent and
>occasionally uses nonsense words. After a few pleasantries, he tells
>you that he's from a parallel universe that is a near duplicate of our
>own except that it's several centuries ahead.
>
>His mission is to change our future. In his universe, a series of wars
>and plagues reduced mankind at one point to less than a thousand
>people. In some universes so closely parallel that there was no
>detectable difference, everyone died.
>
>He acknowledges that his merely popping in changes our 'history', but
>it's their experience that the effect won't alter the fabric of
>society enough to prevent the tragedy.
>
>But there is something you can do. They have records from 'our' time
>and know that tonight's lottery won't have a winner. He's checked the
>numbers from six different games for the past two weeks (as displayed
>on a poster at a gas station he passed on his way from the transfer
>point to your home), and all 552 numbers agree with those on his list,
>indicating high parallelism with their universe. Since the drawing is
>within hours and at a considerable distance, it is highly unlikely
>that his presence will affect the balls drawn.

>By chance, you planned to go to the grocery store today anyway, and
>can buy a lottery ticket there.

>What, if anything, could he say to convince you to spend a dollar to
>play 'his' numbers for a $65,000,000 lottery?

>What he can't do:

Convince me that he's telling the truth.  One of the more likely actual
explanations, is that he's a psychology grad student conducting some sort
of study, and even if we assume I'm a hundred times smarter than the
average psychology grad student, he has very likely put a hundred times
more effort into thinking this scheme up than I'm going to waste trying
to unravel it.  So I'll expect to be outsmarted rather than convinced,
and won't allow myself to be convinced.

But as long as his spiel is entertaining, and I don't have anything better
to do, I'll ask him the obvious questions.  Those are mostly the ones you
say he won't answer, so it's going to get boring real fast and I'm going
to send him on his way.

If I remember his numbers, though, I will buy a lottery ticket.  That's
occasionally a worthwhile purchase for the entertainment value on its 
own, and he's made this one more entertaining than most.


If I *win*, I'm going to have to put a whole lot of thought into what
comes next.  The lottery people can live with the suspense (this is the
sort of purchase I'd normally make with cash, and I'd make certain of
it this time).


-- 
*John Schilling                    * "Anything worth doing,         *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP       *  is worth doing for money"     *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner *    -13th Rule of Acquisition   *
*White Elephant Research, LLC      * "There is no substitute        *
*John.Schillin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
      *  for success"                  *
*661-718-0955 or 661-275-6795      *    -58th Rule of Acquisition   *