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John Henry · 04-12-2004, 11:14 AM

If the lottery really is random and any combination of numbers can come up, why do we never see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6?

The answer is that for every combination that can come up and make us go 'hmm, that's wierd' there are a million more that won't make us bat an eyelid. So the overwhelming probability is that any given observer will exist in one of the far more infinite number of mundane universes, rather than one of the bizzare ones.

The more bizzare you get, the fewer universes there are like that. After all things only get to be bizzare by not happening very often.

There may be n universes where a carrot in a cowboy hat rides its bike up a wall somewhwere at some point in that universe's lifetime, but the chances of any given person even existing at the time it happens, let alone being anywhere near it are insignificant.

If you want to find a universe where there are loads of crazy things happen (so you can improve your chances of seeing something crazy), your chance of being in one are even more remote, because there are only n/loads of those (or perhaps n/(e^loads) I can't say exactly.

The other thing is that wierd stuff does happen. Take the big bang, or a big rock being thrown out from a boiling mass of gas, then cooling in such a way that parts of its surface begin to form into shapes that can reproduce themselves, respond to stimuli and eventually start making observations, or water falling out of the sky, or big rivers of boiling granite emerging from the Earth. It's just that once something wierd has happened, it becomes normal.

04-12-2004, 11:14 AM	#4 (permalink)
John Henry Addict Location: Grey Britain	If the lottery really is random and any combination of numbers can come up, why do we never see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6? The answer is that for every combination that can come up and make us go 'hmm, that's wierd' there are a million more that won't make us bat an eyelid. So the overwhelming probability is that any given observer will exist in one of the far more infinite number of mundane universes, rather than one of the bizzare ones. The more bizzare you get, the fewer universes there are like that. After all things only get to be bizzare by not happening very often. There may be n universes where a carrot in a cowboy hat rides its bike up a wall somewhwere at some point in that universe's lifetime, but the chances of any given person even existing at the time it happens, let alone being anywhere near it are insignificant. If you want to find a universe where there are loads of crazy things happen (so you can improve your chances of seeing something crazy), your chance of being in one are even more remote, because there are only n/loads of those (or perhaps n/(e^loads) I can't say exactly. The other thing is that wierd stuff does happen. Take the big bang, or a big rock being thrown out from a boiling mass of gas, then cooling in such a way that parts of its surface begin to form into shapes that can reproduce themselves, respond to stimuli and eventually start making observations, or water falling out of the sky, or big rivers of boiling granite emerging from the Earth. It's just that once something wierd has happened, it becomes normal. __________________ "No one was behaving from very Buddhist motives. Then, thought Pigsy, he was hardly a Buddha, nor was he a monkey. Presently, he was a pig spirit changed into a little girl pretending to be a little boy to be offered to a water monster. It was all very simple to a pig spirit." Last edited by John Henry; 04-12-2004 at 11:18 AM..