Re: What would make you believe?

Michael Ash <mike@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> mcv <mcvmcv@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> Wayne Throop <throopw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>> : Quadibloc <jsavard@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>>> : After all, the very slim possibility he is telling the truth is
enough
>>> : to improve the odds of winning the $65 million significantly.
>>> 
>>> "Significantly"?  I don't quite see that.
>> 
>> Then consider this: with a $65 million jackpot and $1 tickers, chances
>> of winning the jackpot are less then 1/65 million. Let's say it's
>> 0.00000001 (and that's probably generous). Now what do you think the
>> chances are that this man is speaking the truth? 0.001? 0.000001? I
>> completely agree that he's most likely lying or insane, and I'd give
>> the combined odds of that 0.999999, but that still leaves a 0.000001
>> chance that he is actually from the future. This chance is 100 times
>> bigger than the chance of winning the lottery, so my chances of
>> winning just went up 10000%! You bet I'm gonna buy that lottery ticket,
>> but I still won't expect to win.
> 
> Just out of curiosity, how did you decide on that probability? You think

> that there's a one-in-a-million chance that he's actually from the
future. 
> There are probably a million people on the planet who think they're from

> the future. Do you really think it's likely that one of them is *right* 
> about it?

Not in the least, but that's not how probabilities work, although it's
impossible to get the probabilities of complex situations like this
correct intuitively.
The basic probability that we're talking about here is the chance that
time travel is even possible. According to my current world view, there's
no chance in hell, but my current world view could easily be wrong. I
estimate that chance well over 0.01. The chance that time travel is
possible? No idea, but if someone like Stephen Hawking has seriously
considered the possibility, who am I to say that chance is smaller
than 0.001?

Now, given the chance that time travel is possible, what's the chance
that mankind will seriously fuck up and nearly wipe themselves out?
Pretty big IMO. We've seen several serious scenarios for doing that
in the past decades, so I'm certainly willing to grant this a 0.1
chance. Considering this scenario, what's the chance that someone
will travel back in time and try to prevent it? Given that time
travel is possible? Well, they need to discover it first, ofcourse,
but if it's possible, chances are it will be discovered sooner or
later.

So, given all of that, what's the chance that they'll pick *me* for
their bizarre mission to save the world? Tiny ofcourse, but better
than average, I suspect. I'm smart, educated, open to questioning what
I believe in, willing to spend money on good causes rather than indulge
in hedonism, and I live in a part of the world with better than average
access to whatever resources might be necessary for such a mission.

The end result is bound to be a ridiculously small chance, but given
that someone is at my door telling me this increases the chance. Not
to any actually likely odds, but to, I don't know, wild guess:
0.000001? The man at my door is much easier explained by the theory
that he's delusional, but this unlikely scenario also suits these
events remarkably well. It'd be stupid to deny that, even if there's
still 99.9999% chance it's nonsense.

> One in a million seems inconceivably generous to me. Despite hanging out

> in this group, I'm not particularly SF-credulous in real life (and why 
> should I be? These sorts of things just don't happen) and I would put
the 
> chances that he's telling the truth at something more like one in one 
> quintillion, or lower yet.

I'm not particularly SF-credulous in real life either, and I agree
that these things just don't happen, but it'd be unbelievably arrogant
to insist that there's no chance that my view of the world is the only
possibility, and that there's not even 0.1% chance that I'm wrong.

I'm estimating the chances that I'm wrong in some of the things I
believe in much higher than that. Well over 50%, actually (I just
don't know *which* things I'd be wrong at). I estimate the chances
of time travelling being possible much smaller ofcourse, but mainly
because if time travel was possible, we (and history) should be
flooded with time travellers. Mankind wiping itself out shortly
after the discovery of time travel would explain the lack of time
travellers quite well, however, making it possibly one of the more
realistic (though still very unlikely) time travel scenarios.

I'm sticking with my original assessment of the situation: this
story is well worth my $1.


mcv.
-- 
Science is not the be-all and end-all of human existence. It's a tool.
A very powerful tool, but not the only tool. And if only that which
could be verified scientifically was considered real, then nearly all
of human experience would be not-real.                  -- Zachriel