| A Simple throw of the Dice I want you to imagine a situation were somebody is throwing a dice.First they throw a dice and get a six,they then throw another six and then another.After that their friend starts to take notice of what's going on.The friend then says "I bet you 10 quid it's not another six".The dice thrower feels he's on a lucky streak and says "OK" and rolls again,getting another six.The friend wanting his money back,eggs on the dice thrower to try for another,figuring that rolling five sixes in a row is pushing the boundaries of normal luck and so has a excellent chance of winning his money back.The dice thrower takes up the challenge rolls the dice and.................. Well the ending of the story is irrelevant,but at that exact moment where we left the story,the odds of the friend of winning his money back is 1 in 6 Six dice sides but with only one side it can land face up on.And that has been the case mathematically speaking every throw.But we humans don't experience it like that. We know that the 'chances' are not even with every throw and that the Dicethrower was less likely at that last throw to get a six than normal. It's like the dice was increasing the number of sides as it went along.because it was BEING EFFECTED BY THE THROWS BEFORE IT! I can't stress how anti science that is. |
| Probability,NASA and the Origins of Life Over the last few years there's been a lot of speculation about the likelihood of life on Mars and now I see that a NASA mission is going to map the surface in attempt to look for signs of hidden frozen water, which is the one of the basic necessities for life. Now I find this very odd because ever since I got interested in this subject back in the late 70's, Science through TV,magazines and books has been telling us that life was a freak,completely accidental event, but that probability theory could demonstrate it was a predictable event. Enough monkeys and enough time etc.This seemed to be killer argument aimed to kill off the idea that God was necessary for the creation of life. So what the hell are NASA up to! Don't they realise they're wasting their time? They don't seemed to be impressed with Probabltity theory. It's hard not to come to the conclusion that by looking for life on our nearest neighbour planet they've come to believe that life will get going all over the place just given the slightest chance. This gives us an image of a 'pregnant' universe, and couldn't be more opposite to the barren one that Science has been telling us is so. Well where does that leave probability theory and the origin of life, does it have any relevance? You would think that I wouldn't believe there wasn't any. But probabilty theory seems to have such an 'organisational' effect upon physical processes and living things en masse that's it's hard not to believe that it's not a key factor in it's conception. And also Science, by linking 'random' chance to the origins of life, has made a connection they didn't intend to make. If you combine the fact that Science argues that life is expected in the universe but only 'very occasionally', and the fact that now NASA with massive dollar backing is looking for signs of life on our nearest neighbour.It's suggestive that the randomness in the universe is seriously loaded ! Just as I was thinking about the implications of this, a monkey came up to me with his radical reworking of Hamlet, but I had to tell him he's now old hat. Because of these Mars missions, monkeys have been popping up everywhere with their versions of Hamlet! |
| An Unlucky streak ? My wife and I over the years have played trivial pursuits, ludo and numerous games that involve dice. We sure know how to have a good time! But the curious thing that became evident with my wife is that she was consistently unlucky in them. I became aware of this particularly in Trivial Pursuits because my wife has considerably better all round general knowledge that I do, but I would invariably win. I noticed that she wouldn't play the odds by only answering a question when you had to, thus greatly reducing the strain upon your general knowledge. She told me that she always been 'unlucky' and she just given up trying.This imbalance in all the games we played became so noticeable between the two of us, that it was a source of ironic humour between the two us and would be the reason why we packed in playing any kind of game based predominantly on luck. What are you to make of this story? Dependant on your personality you could suggest - That my memory is exagerrating the 'unluckiness' for some personal reason to find somnething mystical in my life. - My wife's negative view of her own luck has somehow caused her in some odd but explainable way to lose or to convince me that she's lost more games than she really has. - Or the dice was loaded in some strange way. - Or her unluckiness is an improbable event that is somehow allowed by probability theory. - Or that I'm a liar and a timewaster. - That this evidence looks interesting but if studied in laboratory conditions would prove to be explainable by some of the reasons above - some other psychological explanation I haven't thought of Well you pays your money and you takes your choice.But I personally find none of these convincing because I was there and I can find no simple solution to this.It's obvious to me and has always been obvious to my wife before I ever met her that she is simply 'unlucky' in these sort of luck based games. I prefer to face this awkward phenomena straight on and presume it suggests something very interesting about the nature of chance. I believe that it's not mystical and has very much to do with living things and there inter-relationship with the world around them. And of course is profoundly heretical to orthodox science. |
| Three short pieces on the nature of chance |
| A Simple throw of the Dice |
| An Unlucky Streak ? |
| Probablilty,NASA and the Origins of Life |
| The Modern Paranormalist |