Re: What would make you believe?

John Schilling <schillin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 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).

Keep in mind that winning the lottery is, more or less by definition, not 
so unusual that it means something. *Somebody* wins these things, and I 
bet there are a lot of winners whose inspiration was weirder than having a

crazy person show up at their door in the morning spouting the numbers.

If he wants to be convincing, and assuming people will listen to him at 
all, he needs to give not only the numbers for your lottery, but for 
several others as well. Winning a single 1:100000000 lottery is very lucky

for you but it doesn't mean much. Picking the winning numbers for, say, 
six of them would indicate that something more is going on.

Also consider that such a pick would make this man interesting but it 
doesn't make him *right*. Despite our hanging out in an SF oriented group 
and talking about alternate universes and time travel and all that, I 
would imagine that when it comes to real life, these things are far away 
from our thoughts. It certainly is the case for me. If a crazy person 
showed up my door and spouted the winning lottery numbers for enough games

to convince me that it couldn't possibly be luck, I'd certainly have to 
think about what might be going on. But the fact that he also tossed out 
this insane story about being from the future would be meaningless to this

process, other than showing that he obviously has some mental problems. My

first theory would be that there's some kind of rigging going on with 
these lotteries and he was somehow involved before he got all funny in the

head.

This would also make me very cautious about collecting or using my 
winnings, since they would effectively be ill-gotten. Some consideration 
might need to be given as to the most effective way to ensure that nobody 
finds out I even bought a ticket.

-- 
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software