Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
6 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,815 Year: 3,072/9,624 Month: 917/1,588 Week: 100/223 Day: 11/17 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Faith
happy_atheist
Member (Idle past 4913 days)
Posts: 326
Joined: 08-21-2004


Message 162 of 216 (140383)
09-06-2004 2:13 PM
Reply to: Message 152 by riVeRraT
09-06-2004 1:15 PM


Re: Are there things outside those that can be tested?
Feel free to tell me anything that you think it means. None of it seems relevant to anything at all in my life though.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 152 by riVeRraT, posted 09-06-2004 1:15 PM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 172 by riVeRraT, posted 09-06-2004 5:25 PM happy_atheist has replied

  
happy_atheist
Member (Idle past 4913 days)
Posts: 326
Joined: 08-21-2004


Message 177 of 216 (140442)
09-06-2004 6:21 PM
Reply to: Message 172 by riVeRraT
09-06-2004 5:25 PM


Re: Are there things outside those that can be tested?
I've been at "crossroads" for the last 6 years at least though. First I did my GCSE's, then I went to college and did my A-Levels, then I went to Uni and left home, did lots of exams there. Now i'm at a different uni about to finish. We're always at crossroads

This message is a reply to:
 Message 172 by riVeRraT, posted 09-06-2004 5:25 PM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 183 by riVeRraT, posted 09-06-2004 8:15 PM happy_atheist has not replied

  
happy_atheist
Member (Idle past 4913 days)
Posts: 326
Joined: 08-21-2004


Message 178 of 216 (140444)
09-06-2004 6:23 PM
Reply to: Message 171 by riVeRraT
09-06-2004 5:23 PM


No, they also predict the distribution of number of winning tickets from random chance.
Where is faith involved?
I don't think they do that. Can you support that claim?
Or how they could attain that number? They would have to know the unknown to calculate that with accuracy
Statistics is ALL about determining probability distributions. They will know with large accuracy how many people will win on average. They will have a profit margin that they know they will meet depending on how many tickets they sell.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 171 by riVeRraT, posted 09-06-2004 5:23 PM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 184 by riVeRraT, posted 09-06-2004 8:16 PM happy_atheist has not replied

  
happy_atheist
Member (Idle past 4913 days)
Posts: 326
Joined: 08-21-2004


Message 179 of 216 (140445)
09-06-2004 6:26 PM
Reply to: Message 171 by riVeRraT
09-06-2004 5:23 PM


I'm sure at some point they had to put the odds greatly in their favor, because despite the odds, people can still win.
It's not accurate to say that people win "despite the odds" because that implies that the odds say that "can't" win. The odds never do that, they just determine how many winners there will be on average given a certain number of plays. The casinos definately have the odds in their favour, they always have the odds in their favour. That is the reason they don't lose money! Even if they pay out a big payment every now and then, they are in profit at the end of the year. They're not taking chances, they know they will make money overall (assuming they're following good business practices and know their maths)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 171 by riVeRraT, posted 09-06-2004 5:23 PM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 185 by riVeRraT, posted 09-06-2004 8:19 PM happy_atheist has replied

  
happy_atheist
Member (Idle past 4913 days)
Posts: 326
Joined: 08-21-2004


Message 180 of 216 (140446)
09-06-2004 6:29 PM
Reply to: Message 171 by riVeRraT
09-06-2004 5:23 PM


You who thinks that Murpey's Law is used by insurance companies understands statistics better than me.
I know this for a fact. If there is a chance of anything happening, they will charge us for the possibility of it happening, not how many times it has actually happened. Odds from previous accidents have something to do with it, but not everything to do with it.
How do you think they determine the odds? They don't pluck them from mid air. They gather statistical data, produce statistical models, then use the past data to determine the odds. They have to gather personal information about you so they can place you in a demographic, then they determine the odds of someone in that demographic having a particular sort of accident.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 171 by riVeRraT, posted 09-06-2004 5:23 PM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 186 by riVeRraT, posted 09-06-2004 8:24 PM happy_atheist has replied

  
happy_atheist
Member (Idle past 4913 days)
Posts: 326
Joined: 08-21-2004


Message 198 of 216 (140636)
09-07-2004 10:44 AM
Reply to: Message 186 by riVeRraT
09-06-2004 8:24 PM


riVeRat writes:
I know its not a technical term, but they do use it, I know a few people in the industry. If it can happen it will, they have learn this through the scientific method of objective observation.
Just because something can possibly happen that doesn't mean it ever will. It just means it might.
riVeRat writes:
In other words, if the odds are 100 to 1 that something could happen within a given year, they would look at it and say its more likely that the odds will get beaten, and we will lose, so lets bump up the premiums to cover, just in case.
As I said odds can't get beaten...they're not a challenge, they're just a mathematical tool that are used to work out what will happen on average. If something supposedly has a million to one chance of happening and it happens today that is not in any way beating the odds. If it happens every day regularly then that would be evidence that whoever worked out the odds had got it wrong, not that the odds were being beaten. People use statistics to work out statistical signifigance. You can use probability distributions to work out what the average result will be. Take a Normal distribution for example, it is almost certain that every result will be within 3 standard deviations of the average result. Anything further away from the average than that and the odds become astronomical against it happening, so if it happens you know something is biasing the result.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 186 by riVeRraT, posted 09-06-2004 8:24 PM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 203 by riVeRraT, posted 09-07-2004 4:56 PM happy_atheist has not replied

  
happy_atheist
Member (Idle past 4913 days)
Posts: 326
Joined: 08-21-2004


Message 199 of 216 (140638)
09-07-2004 10:49 AM
Reply to: Message 185 by riVeRraT
09-06-2004 8:19 PM


Of course some people win more than others. Yours odds of winning the lotters don't become less if you've already won the lottery, each lottery is independant of the previous lottery. Theres nothing saying you can't win the lottery more than once. There will be no statistical signifigance to the number of wins people have on the lottery though. That is what the probability distributions are used for, statistical signifigance. If someone won the lottery a statistically signifigant number of times it would imply the lottery was biased, and someone was cheating along the way.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 185 by riVeRraT, posted 09-06-2004 8:19 PM riVeRraT has not replied

  
happy_atheist
Member (Idle past 4913 days)
Posts: 326
Joined: 08-21-2004


Message 201 of 216 (140655)
09-07-2004 11:45 AM
Reply to: Message 200 by lfen
09-07-2004 11:43 AM


He asked if it is proven that mutations stand the test of time (I assume he means is it proven that mutations are selected for or against via natural selection). Post some references showing how alelle (sp) frequency has been tracked through a population maybe?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 200 by lfen, posted 09-07-2004 11:43 AM lfen has not replied

  
happy_atheist
Member (Idle past 4913 days)
Posts: 326
Joined: 08-21-2004


Message 202 of 216 (140658)
09-07-2004 11:53 AM
Reply to: Message 188 by riVeRraT
09-06-2004 8:34 PM


riVeRat writes:
Oh one other question. I'm sure you know about the bacteria in the petri dish evolving experiment. It seemed to me the way it was explained, that they evoloved on the spot, after the were developed, by exposing them to an attacking bacteria, and not during the development stage. The offspring did carry on the mutation.
I'm guessing the evolution between bacteria and humans is very different. Why is that, other than the obvious differences between humans and bacteria?
Ok, I think you misunderstood this slightly. The bacteria did not evolve on the spot. The original bacteria was not resistant to the phage. The phage could (and should) kill it totally. However the bacteria reproduce extremely rapidly (an exponential number new bacteria in a day). Somewhere along the way one bacteria reproduces imperfectly and a mutations occurs that makes the NEW bacteria resistant to the phage. This means that the phage cannot kill that bacteria. It is important to note the difference between the original bacteria and the new bacteria. The original bacteria did not change ITSELF, it reproduced and it's offspring contained a mutation that it did not. Thus individuals do not evolve. You do not have an individual bacteria that wasn't resistant suddenly becoming resistant itself. You have future generations becoming resistant.
This message has been edited by happy_atheist, 09-07-2004 10:54 AM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 188 by riVeRraT, posted 09-06-2004 8:34 PM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 205 by riVeRraT, posted 09-07-2004 5:12 PM happy_atheist has replied

  
happy_atheist
Member (Idle past 4913 days)
Posts: 326
Joined: 08-21-2004


Message 207 of 216 (140733)
09-07-2004 5:41 PM
Reply to: Message 205 by riVeRraT
09-07-2004 5:12 PM


Mutation is completely random. Mutations occur because the replication of the DNA is not perfect. Mutation doesn't happen in any way by design, there is no forethought in any sense of the term. The reason not all the bacteria mutated is because it is random.
There is no inbuilt survivability mechanism in the bacteria. All that happens is that a mutation occurs that purely by chance gives it some level of resistance to the phage without killing the bacteria in some other way.
When that happens, that bacteria will be more sucessfull than any of the other bacteria so the offspring of that bacteria will dominate untill all the bacteria have this mutation.
The same is true of feathers or anything else. Nothing said that some animal needed feathers. There is no ultimate aim for evolution. It isn't following a plan and there is no goal. The reason some creatures have feathers is because they evolved from other structures slowly through mutation, and each stage of the way there was some survival advantage. The mutations that led there were random, natural selection that picked the mutations is not random. It is fully dependant on the environment.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 205 by riVeRraT, posted 09-07-2004 5:12 PM riVeRraT has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 209 by riVeRraT, posted 09-07-2004 11:45 PM happy_atheist has replied

  
happy_atheist
Member (Idle past 4913 days)
Posts: 326
Joined: 08-21-2004


Message 215 of 216 (140903)
09-08-2004 8:40 AM
Reply to: Message 209 by riVeRraT
09-07-2004 11:45 PM


Of course its random. I think you're under the impression that mutations only happen when they're needed and then only mutations that are helpful happen. This is not the case at all. The majority of mutations are neutral (they neither increase fitness nor decrease it). Many mutations are harmful, they cause fitness to reduce. Some mutations will be helpful, they make the individual more likely to reproduce. Natural selection ensures that the helpful ones are forced to stay, and the harmful ones are forced out. The neutral ones are neither forced to stay nor forced out.
Edit to add....what i'm trying to say is that mutations happen with every individual. I can't remember the exact number, but I think on average each human has about 50 mutations that their parents never had. They don't just occur to solve a particular problem a species is going through. And they don't occur for every problem. If a helpful mutation doesn't come along, the species may just go extinct.
This message has been edited by happy_atheist, 09-08-2004 07:41 AM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 209 by riVeRraT, posted 09-07-2004 11:45 PM riVeRraT has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024