Creationists do so love to yammer on about how vanishingly unlikely it is that random chemicals will form themselves into even primitive forms of life. The implication is that since the numbers are huge, that means it can’t happen.
Well, how about an occurrence that has a statistical likelihood of “one in 18 septillion.” That’s 1/18,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Well, guess what.
Meet The “Luckiest” Woman In The World
First, she won $5.4 million; then a decade later, she won $2 million; then two years later $3 million; and finally, in the spring of 2008, she hit a $10 million jackpot.
Unsuprisingly, it turns out that a lot of her neighbors seem to be convinced that this is all God’s Doing. As with the statistical unlikelihood of chemical biogenesis, or the supposed “fine tuning” of the universal constants that allow for life as we know it, there is no other explanation for this astronomically unlikely event.
Except, however, there *is* an alternative explanation. Turns out she has a PhD in statistics and may have figured out how to game the system. If so… good for her!
The point here is… believing that vanishingly unlikely stats prove that something is impossible without divine intervention may simply mean that you haven’t really understood the system.
7 Responses to “There’s a lesson here about “fine tuning””
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I figured out how she’s doing it.
The article states she’s a trained statistician.
She’s figured out something so simple, it’s brilliant.
A lot of people use their birth date as a lucky number when picking a lottery number in a game where you get to choose your own lottery number
Therefore, the numbers above 12 are under-represented as the first part of the lottery number, as are numbers above 31 as the second part.
You could even figure out which numbers are most unlikely as the third part, by realizing that few people are going to be represented that are 90+, and it would be illegal for people under 18 to wager on it.
Given that laws require that the odds of winning can only be slightly less than random chance, that would give you enough of a edge to move things in your favor.
But the birthday method would only good for avoiding picking numbers that others have already picked, not for picking the numbers that are going to pop up on the ping-pong balls in a couple of days (which is the real aim of the game).
Agreed. The “birthday method” won;t help you win the Lotto. What it *might* do is help you get a greater share if you *do* win the Lotta, as there might be fewer people playing that number.
Still, I’d rather have a higher probability of winning the Lotto in the first place.
The Virginia Lottery Board announces every now and then that 80% of all winners are “easy picks” made randomly by the lottery vending machine.
came to your site via google for a book review, and i happened across this post.
im not a statistician, but i cant help but wonder if the creationist couldnt reasonably draw the opposite conclusion from your comparison. that is, astronomically unlikely events have nearly no chance of occurring unless someone is pulling the strings from behind the curtains. in which case, the events in question arent really so improbable, but rather an outcome of an agents (whether god or statistician) manipulation. seems, what would have been more difficult for the fine-tuning creationist to swallow is if the lottery winner were just lucky after all. at least it would have been evidence that statistical improbability does not mean impossibility.
Wow…I mean …..Wow.
Some people just have no grasp of logic and no ability to formulate a cogent augment. You mock the fine tuning suggesting it doesnt have to be by design and your example is that someone won the lottery using their intelligence.
A single FT parameter, I repeat, a single parameter is 120 places to the right of the decimal point. I want you to pull up a chair, mr wizard, and imagine you are the only thing that exists and you witness an explosion or expansion of energy and, in time lapsed mode, it starts building atoms when there is no business for something called charge, or strong force existing and this lego world invents light and planets, and poof….out of the ground pops out people with eyes to see this world and consciousness to understand it and tell me thats akin to a lady winning a lottery.
Are you for real? Her numbers were just digits in a world that already exists. It’s not like they were the code for the 4 chamber heart and its precise electrical and pressure system. Did the matching numbers replicate into observers? Come on. minimizing the implications of design from fine tuning when scientists originally thought the world just “appeared” designed and sought to show it just looked that way….but instead found the math was infinitely worse than even the appearance is just desperation brought on by pathological bias
> A single FT parameter, I repeat, a single parameter is 120 places to the right of the decimal point.
This is part of the “anthropic principle,” the assumption that everything is just magically and amazingly s4rt up in advance just for them… rather than the understanding that “we” are simply the result of the way things are set up.