Help with probability

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I attempted to "hit" Numbers 23 by deliberately aiming for it. It took 150 attempts to hit it randomly. I attempted to "hit" Solomon 1, by deliberately aiming for it. It took 192 attempts.

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That's quite impressively bad, since the order of the books should have let you narrow both of those locations down quite quickly. Maybe the suggestion that your Bible might open more easily at some pages than others is actually true.But, if you were aiming at something you would find meaningful to a particular question, the issue is more about your ability to find something meaningful in the pages presented to you. I'm going to guess that the odds of doing that are a lot better than 1/125 even given a completely random page.

Ringo/Paul, I think those comments are a prime example of how people trying to make an objective evaluation, can let their ignorance skew their conclusions.I've stated several times that I have omitted most of the information from my personal experiences. You have scraps of my testimony, that I have provided for the purposes of speculation only.The point about trying to consciously "hit" a scripture, is actually an example of reductio ad absurdum (my attempt to be absurdly hyper-objective). It shows that even if I was subconsciously somehow aiming in the direction of the specific scripture, the "aim" would have to be extremely approximate, given my eyes are two dimensional, and can't bend around corners.But when I actually purposefully aim for those scriptures, as best I can, with the intention to open to them, and I look at the open pages, to purposefully aim, EVEN THEN, I can't seems to "hit" those scriptures easily. (You can help if you guys want to try it, that would be good, but honesty is required. What I do is I select a scripture, then note roughly, it's location in the bible, then I aim to open the bible there, then I usually fail, then I will flex my bible to get rid of any page memory, then do it again. I tried 150 times and 192 times, but I CERTAINLY INVITE anyone to test for themselves, if they are skeptical. Sure - you might get a better result, I don't doubt you might, but this is by no means an easy thing to do, with thin bible pages.)I would accept any results, done with honesty. It would be interesting to see how easy or hard it is to achieve say, 1 in 30You have to remember, that when I ask God to give me a specific verse of scripture, I don't then aim for it, I don't even "look" at the area of open-pages, I just open my bible, sometimes I flick through it.But I have omitted my thoughts pertaining to apriori knowledge of scripture, and posteriori knowledge. Indeed, I have omitted many things, because I am not trying to prove anything, I am just trying to get some basic idea of probability.You might think, "then give us more information, and we can show you how", but to be honest, I don't need much information, to know things, once I have a scrap, I then figure out the rest for myself. I only read about probability for half an hour last night, and I figured out the rest for myself, pretty much, once Mod has said I was correct in my maths.If I am correct, rather than incorrect, might it not be polite to assume I might have more brains than you credit me with? But rather a long history of mikey-hatred, dashed with the vinegar of Theism-hatred, is starting to make peoples' posts go more towards the political topics of science, faith, God's existence, and how dumb and wrong Christians like mike are, etc,..and so forth.To which I can only reply; "about what, sir, given I have stated ad nauseam that I am only speculating for my own amusement, and that this is a matter of faith?"Now if I had came on here, all guns blazing, declaring that my prayer results show a probability of 74 million to 1, then that would be another thing, I agree. Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

This has been an interesting discussion, I think DR A's comments about God's existence aren't topical, I am more interested in keeping this interesting to me, because I have to have some measure of intellectual nourishment from discussion, otherwise I tend to just go away. A meltdown would be boring, please let us ignore any off-topic comments DR A and his faithful soldier, might have encouraged.(Just jesting, Ringo, mikey love is still in place for you, in reality. Your inner-baba, knows it deep down! Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

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Ringo/Paul, I think those comments are a prime example of how people trying to make an objective evaluation, can let their ignorance skew their conclusions.

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What conclusions ?

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Sure - you might get a better result, I don't doubt you might, but this is by no means an easy thing to do, with thin bible pages.)I would accept any results, done with honesty. It would be interesting to see how easy or hard it is to achieve say, 1 in 30

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A binary search can find one element in an ordered list of 500 items in no more than 10 attempts.Even a purely random search should be able to do it in 250 on average.If you could assume that they are in the first half of the Bible (if you meant 1 Samuel, then both are) then you should be able to do it in 125 guesses on average.

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You have to remember, that when I ask God to give me a specific verse of scripture, I don't then aim for it, I don't even "look" at the area of open-pages, I just open my bible, sometimes I flick through it.

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Which might mean that your intuition - perhaps aided by "flicking through" - is more accurate than consciously trying to guess the right page.

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You might think, "then give us more information, and we can show you how", but to be honest, I don't need much information, to know things, once I have a scrap, I then figure out the rest for myself. I only

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Actually, I'm saying "if you give me more information I might be able to estimate the probability"

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If I am correct, rather than incorrect, might it not be polite to assume I might have more brains than you credit me with? But rather a long history of mikey-hatred, dashed with the vinegar of Theism-hatred, is starting to make peoples' posts go more towards the political topics of science, faith, God's existence, and how dumb and wrong Christians like mike are, etc,..and so forth.

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This is quite unwarranted, and so far as I am concerned (I make no judgement on Ringo, either way) untrue. Edited by PaulK, : fixed tagsEdited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Well, it seemed to me that you were trying to test a hypothesis (specifically, that an omnipotent being is granting your wishes) against a null hypothesis.Well, it's obvious how to do this.(1) If your wish is for something inevitable ("Oh Lord, please grant that when I drop this brick, it should fall down rather than up") then you learn nothing from having your wish granted.(2) If your wish is for something fairly likely ("Oh Lord, let it be sunny tomorrow") then again you learn very little, since even if it is sunny this might be ascribed to causes other than your wishing.(3) If you wish for something highly improbable ("Oh Lord, let all ten of these dice come up six") then the granting of your wish, though in principle attributable to chance, would be so only at very long odds.(4) Finally, you could ask for something completely impossible, such as the ability to levitate. The granting of this wish would be conclusive and unambiguous.I suggested the abolition of malaria because obviously this would be a good thing in itself. If you suspect that God is granting your wishes, and yet you're not going to wish for this, I would question either your morality or the sincerity of your beliefs.

Hi Mikey,
This is an interesting topic for me now that it's about scripture. First I've got to say that we shouldn't be using the Bible this way although I know from experience how addicting it is to open it hoping God will speak to me in a particular way on a particular concern. But I've discovered that when I am the instigator He very rarely does this, that is, if I open it with a specific question in mind I very rarely get an answer to my question that way. And I do have to mention that years ago, back in the 90s I think, He very clearly spoke within my spirit (not audibly but word for word) saying "You cannot force Me to speak with you." And I realized at that point that that's what we are doing when we open the Bible hoping or expecting to get an answer from Him.Nevetheless when we are not doing this He often does speak to us through scripture. Nothing could be more common really. But there are special instances too, and even times when He will answer a specific request that way. For instance back when I wasn't yet a Christian but seeking through reading books on religion, during a period when I thought I was going to become a Catholic, I ran across the statement in a Catholic book that "The Pope is the head of the Church." I had enough of the Spirit of God at that point to experience that statement as very disturbing. I can't remember if I opened the Bible looking for the answer but when I did open it the place it opened to was one of the two verses that say that Christ is the head of the Church, I don't remember which one, Colossians 1:18 or Ephesians 5:23.I was also involved in occultic practices during those early days of seeking and one "reading" I got about my future was rather upsetting and scary. The Bible was lying open on the table and a breeze from the window riffled the pages and left it open at a particular page where my eye fell on the verse: "In the world you will have tribulation but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."I can't take either of these events as anything but direct answers to my concern of the moment. And there were others.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Thanks Paul, but I wasn't really referring to you in that last comment about mikey-hatred, I think you have done well in this thread, sorry if it seemed aimed at you.

Like Modulous, you seem to have this strange need to state rather obvious things to me. Like when he gave me a list of what is likely to him, and what he would accept, and what he wouldn't accept, as though I would not know the difference.So here is my response DR.A.1. If you add one and one, you will get two.
2. If you times 2 by 4 you will get 8.
3. But if you times 2 by 8 and get 7, that would be wrong!
4. Now if you ask for a fractal to become an inverse square teapot, that sure would be something! You suggested the abolition of slavery to be facetious, it was a glib attempt at an absurdum, it seems. But I won't be drawn.Nevertheless, thanks for your time.

Thanks Faith, I understand your concerns.Can I give you an explanation by PM, please, as I am willing to discuss more personal Christian-things with you, but perhaps not publically.

Well, there is another possibility.You open up a random scripture, and you read into it what you need to at the moment.How many phrases could be shoe horned into place at that time??? Do you know?

The overwhelming and vast probability is that you're wrong. Therefore, there is a high probability that this is a delusion. That's not a slur on your character. This one is very common, where the exceptions to the rule humans are imperfect, are not. I think traditionally your religion proposes only one so far in the however many billions there have ever been? I am betting that they were firmly persuaded it was a big deal and not some coincidence. That you're right it mostly is a coincidence, but they absolutely know that in this case it can't be. You will fail, because this is in fact, not possible. You may succeed in your attempts from time to time, but this will be as much a result of chance as anything.First of all, how much are you counter-balancing? For instance, there is a bias towards thinking we aren't all that biased ourselves, meaning unless you have taken this bias into account, you should be being biased in the other way even more. How have you avoided selection bias, you seem to be using only one book. Have you taken into consideration availability bias, that the familiar is more likely than the unfamiliar?Confirmation bias is very hard to avoid, even for those trained to do so. Are you keeping full records of your attempts so that you can statistically analyze things in order to avoid the tendency for your mind to remember positive correlations and to neglect negative ones?Bibliomancy and its workings relies on a long practice for thousands of years. Have you considered cultural bias?How do you know to what degree all these biases have when they are in an organic interaction occurring in the most complex (by volume or mass) object known to exist, and how are being certain your counterbalancing is of the correct magnitude...in real time?What other human biases have you taken into consideration? PaulK has already covered practice bias, and biases in some of your apparatus. I believe you. You aren't alone. But alone you will make mistakes. I suggest you accept it into your personal history and enjoy it.Don't go through the effort of trying to convince yourself it's fantastic through mathematics or through uncertain empirical results. If anything avoid them unless you have been as thorough as a well published and cited scientist - they can only serve to reinforce mistakes or drive a wedge into your faith (no good comes of it). I would also suggest you don't try and reassure yourself that because your methods are not transparent they can be relied upon. Accept it for whatever you want to take it as and move on. The worst case scenario is you get into the habit of assuming your exceptional reasoning and confidently get yourself into actual trouble.I believe you that you are reasonable. But most people are, and they all make mistakes. The easiest person to lie to is....? And don't take my post as doing so - I am warning you from one who has studied the human mind to a fellow human struggling through this confusing world - take care, and doubt even yourself - to a reasonable degree.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

That's not so much a response as a random jumble of words. No.---You have not adequately explained your objection to my suggestion. If you want to test a hypothesis, it's better to test it well than to test it badly. I have suggested how to do this.It is always better, after all, to eliminate the element of chance. Parapsychologists, for example, used to test people's telekinetic abilities by getting them to focus their supposed powers on dice and see if they could get them to come up six. Someone or other, it might have been Martin Gardner, suggested an alternative method. Balance an eyelash on top of a billiard ball and put an inverted tumbler over it to protect it from air currents; then give the test subject all day to try to move the eyelash. That way, the researchers couldn't be fooled by randomness and the results would be unambiguous. But it turned out that for some reason the parapsychologists preferred their inferior protocol; whether this was because of its tendency to produce false positives or for some other motive altogether I cannot, of course, say.

What are you afraid of?

Well, the problem is that my personal situation is more than hitting a few scriptures, it's something that is personal, and I could only discuss it with someone that is born-again, and understand spiritual things. There is no point in discussing spiritual matters with people that don't understand them, basically.

I would by no means say I am perfect, perhaps mikey-perfect. No but it's frustrating for me at places like this, because people don't know how I think, or the level of reason I employ, or the willingness to even go past, "objectivity".If it is T.S -> O -> A.S(Theistly subjective, objective, atheistly subjective). If that is the scale, then basically I am crossing over, and becoming hyper-objective to an almost inappropriate level. I am A.S.For example, as a theist, it is natural that I would automatically think I opened the bible once, without aiming at anything. Yet instead of that, I will over-shoot, in my mathematics.So for example, even though I know that for one event, I opened my bible twice, I will in my own mind, count it as 10 openings. (But notice I was the one to mention "subconscious aiming", it was my idea that I would be duping myself, as a possibility)1100 pages - 600 openings - 10 "shots", then I will reduce the 600 openings AS THOUGH I was actually "aiming" for scripture, so I will reduce further, to about 200 openings. (That isn't "objective", it's hyper-objective, I am deliberately attempting to reach an unfairly conservative probability, against my own cause)So, 10 in 200 or, 1 in 20.Now, yes, I also am aware of other things, I mentioned them early on. I am aware not only of page memory, but because I read my bible, know my specific bible, I know the most striking page memories. For example, Isaiah 1, it always turns to, and Philippians 4, to the point where I start to wonder if the whole universe is somehow centered upon these pages, as some kind of hinge. (that is a joke, guys)But thanks for being so objective yourself, that much is clear. A lot of people tend to be opportunistic, at forums like this, but you didn't do that. which makes it harder in my own mind, to dismiss what you say. (the 1 in 20 isn't my conclusion, it's just an example)Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.