XPost: alt.philosophy.taoism, alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, alt.philosophy.zen   
   From: invalid@invalid.invalid   
      
   Tang Huyen  wrote:   
   > On 11/1/2016 8:14 AM, Wilson wrote:   
   >   
   >> In my experience no matter how bad things might seem, it could *always*   
   >> be worse.   
   >   
   > In hospitals and nursing homes, one common consolation   
   > is that however sick you are, there is always somebody   
   > sicker, including unconscious people (veggies), whose   
   > consciousness could never be raised and whose   
   > experience has been (presumably) blown out.   
   >   
   > Sorry for the gallows humour.   
   >   
   > Tang Huyen   
   >   
      
   Let me attempt once again to point out that everything which occurs to us   
   in daily life is statistically improbable and it doesn't take many   
   statistically-improbable's in a row to point out how something is so far   
   out into the range of improbability that you just shake your head and say   
   "Duh" with a smile.   
      
   The simplest example I can think of just now is shooting an arrow into the   
   sky.  Even if you have a machine that shoots the thing up in precisely the   
   same way every time, it doesn't always land in exactly the same spot.  Air   
   currents, floating leaves, unlucky flying chickens, there's always   
   something to perturb any action, to inflect a little randomness into   
   things.  So to compute the probability of any specific event occurring you   
   take 1 and you divide it by the number of things that are *possible*.  That   
   includes air currents, a passing Amazon.com drone, floating leaves, flying   
   chickens, sparrows, inconvenient space-junk landings, you name it, all   
   those things and more are *possible*.  Every sequence of events contains   
   these kinds of numbers, so the chances of any 10 specific things happening   
   in sequence is astronomical, yet every second one of those things happens   
   and it's another 10th event in a specific sequence of 10, oh my isn't that   
   kind of a mindblower, if you're silly enough to think about it.   
   Statisticians get pissed off if you point this out to them, which seems   
   unscientific, but every event is in fact the 10th event in a sequence of   
   10... it's also the billionth event in a sequence of a billion, and so   
   forth.  Every second there are thousands of things that can happen next.   
   Every one of them is *possible*.  It's *possible* for a meteor to fall   
   outside of town, I think that happened in Russia a while back.  It's   
   *possible* for a toilet to fall out of a plane flying overhead and land in   
   the back of my pickup truck.  It isn't *likely* but it's *possible*.   
      
   What then is the difference, between what is likely, and what is possible?   
   What is it that determines how the thread of actuality will meander its way   
   among the million possibilities available for each and every event that   
   actually occurs in real life?  Is it deterministic or random, or is there a   
   third possibility?  Can it be possible to navigate the infinite   
   complexities of the multiverse without getting lost in space?  How much   
   does this obviously valuable superpower cost?  Is there an additional   
   surcharge if you want your superpower delivered as the "siddhi" model,   
   complete with fake turban?   
      
   Master noname the indubitable Taoist Sage and Authentic Moron will answer   
   these questions and more (once i think of them) in the next fun-filled   
   episode, available for only $9.95 per view at a local channel available to   
   your credit card.  [That's what's called humor, folks: it substitutes for   
   the other disclaimers which are more costly unless you pay cash up front.]   
      
      
   --   
   email: noname.1234567.abcdef@gmail.com   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)