Help with probability

I've never accused you of being anything other than a Christian. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

As others have pointed out, when you are the scientist and the subject you run into very serious methodological problems. Clinical trials are full of people who are very honest and well meaning, but still report that their symptoms were cured by a sugar pill. Either sugar pills are the greatest panacea ever created by man, or people are fooling themselves without realizing it. Even more interesting is the no-cebo effect. In one study, people were given a sedative but were told they were given a stimulant. Guess what? They reported being more active and feeling the effects of a stimulant even though they were given a sedative.What you need is a blind. In your specific situation, you would pray to God for a specific scripture, and then tell God to have a panel of subjects find that scripture for you. The subjects would not know what type of scripture they are supposed to be finding. That would be a good starting point for the type of experiment you are trying to create.

If that was in fact all I was doing, you'd think I'd have used the word "miraculous" at least once on this thread.Indeed, if that was even a fraction of a part of a portion of an aspect of what I was doing, you'd think I'd have used the word "miraculous" at least once on this thread.But I didn't. Perhaps you could reply to some of the stuff I've actually said.

Consider it a sanity check.We might not know how you personally think, but we have some good ideas about how humans as a class think.Ambiguity effect
Anchoring or focalism
Attentional bias
Availability heuristic
Availability cascade
Backfire effect
Bandwagon effect
Base rate fallacy or base rate neglect
Belief bias
Bias blind spot
Cheerleader effect
Choice-supportive bias
Clustering illusion
Confirmation bias
Congruence bias
Conjunction fallacy
Conservatism or regressive bias
Conservatism (Bayesian)
Contrast effect
Curse of knowledge
Decoy effect
Denomination effect
Distinction bias
Duration neglect
Empathy gap
Endowment effect
Essentialism
Exaggerated expectation
Experimenter's or expectation bias
Focusing effect
Forer effect or Barnum effect
Framing effect
Frequency illusion
Functional fixedness
Gambler's fallacy
Hard-easy effect
Hindsight bias
Hostile media effect
Hot-hand fallacy
Hyperbolic discounting
Identifiable victim effect
IKEA effect
Illusion of control
Illusion of validity
Illusory correlation
Impact bias
Information bias
Insensitivity to sample size
Irrational escalation
Just-world hypothesis
Less-is-better effect
Loss aversion
Mere exposure effect
Money illusion
Moral credential effect
Negativity effect
Negativity bias
Neglect of probability
Normalcy bias
Observation selection bias
Observer-expectancy effect
Omission bias
Optimism bias
Ostrich effect
Outcome bias
Overconfidence effect
Pareidolia
Pessimism bias
Planning fallacy
Post-purchase rationalization
Pro-innovation bias
Pseudocertainty effect
Reactance
Reactive devaluation
Recency illusion
Restraint bias
Rhyme as reason effect
Risk compensation / Peltzman effect
Selective perception
Semmelweis reflex
Social comparison bias
Social desirability bias
Status quo bias
Stereotyping
Subadditivity effect
Subjective validation
Survivorship bias
Time-saving bias
Unit bias
Well travelled road effect
Zero-risk bias
Zero-sum heuristicThat's just a partial list from here. Not all of them apply to the specific circumstances we are discussing, but trying to 'account' for them with heuristics will not allow you to be mathematically confident in your conclusions.The Dunning-Kruger effect of course, is another issue. No. Subjectivity and Objectivity are not on the same scale, unless we want to represent them orthogonally. You can't get there from here, as they say. Perception is not truth. Memory is not actual history. The wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Etc.All humans are subjective. No human can be objective, as at the very least they have a perspective and interests unlike a mountain.The human brain takes shortcuts to arrive at conclusions that seem to comport with the model of reality already accepted. The whole mind is a complex interaction of dizzying madness and cannot be compensated for by itself.In order to minimize the biases, even in those that swear they don't have them, various techniques have been designed. This reduces the effects of subjectivity but the human never becomes less subjective. It's the method they use which is tidied of as many interferences from the subjectivity of its creators as possible, which provides their results and conclusions with a degree of objectivity unobtainable by a human just winging it. Read the works of Newton one day, you'll see a brilliant mind at work. Observe when he follows mathematics and observation carefully and scrupulously and see what great things resulted. But look at the rest of his work and you will see a great mind come to bizarre conclusions based on basically nothing magnified by the power his own mind.It happened to him, I'm confident it'll happen to you.Feel free to ignore me, obviously. It's just a warning from a stranger passing you on the road, do with it what you will. I try. And look, honestly, by all means try and come up with a ballpark figure. In this case the very worst that can result is you learn a little bit more maths and science in the process. Just don't believe it because of what you find for goodness sake (I know you expressed this isn't the case previously). The point being that it's easy to get into poor reasoning habits that if you are unlucky can lead to you being defrauded or attacked or something.Let us suppose you were able to perform a feat such as taking a Bible (approx 1 chapter per page as per the Bible you describe) that randomised the chapter order after each trial and you were able to pick out randomly generated chapters three times in a row then you've got a1 in a 125,000,000 probability of that happening by chance alone.This is pretty cool. It's roughly the equivalent of playing the Monty Hall game 17 times, always sticking and winning each time. It's also approximately the probability of picking 8 women at random and correctly declaring they either will or already have developed breast cancer.If there were in familiar order but the chapter searched for was randomised after each trial (and we assume a circular bible (I kid you not)) and you were able to reliably get to within a 100 page openings (200pages) through skill and knowledge. And you get1 in a 1,000,000 which is a microprobability.Twenty head tosses guessed in a row. Or pointing out three randomly selected men and declaring they will or have developed breast cancer. It's in order of your probability of being struck by lightning this year assuming you lived a perfectly average life distributed evenly across the entire US.It happens, but it's kind of fun when it happens to you. Unless it was something like getting AIDS, developing schizophrenia AND being diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy.Please note, these stats are just for fun based on random unchecked maths and assuming paper books made by Cthulhu. Your Madness May Vary.

Sorry to disappoint you but I'm aware of all those things already.You've misunderstood my personal experiment. You don't understand reductio ad absurdum.It is proposed, by me, that if I have some subconscious ability to arrive at the right scripture by opening the bible, not only would that mean I was the most skilled person on earth when it came to aiming, but it would mean that my fingers have some sort of magical powers, because even when I try, with all my cunning, ability, to consciously aim as best I can, in every way I can think of, I still get odds that aren't all that impressive. If I am duping myself, then to IMPROVE my chances, should give me a better result.
It doesn't give me a better result, even when I ABSURDLY increase them to the point of almost purposefully opening the correct page, ERGO I am not duping myself. (Reductio ad absurdum)(Or do you believe that the probability is 1 in 1, the same as opening to a page on purpose? )You can now mention a thousand scientific variables, but that will not change the fact that it is impossible to achieve 1 in 1, every time, unless there is an overt reason such as a very heavy page memory. But as I have indicated, I know my bible, and it's page memories. I know things about it you don't, such as that it doesn't contain the book of Acts, and has mistakes in it. This is why your general attempt at rebuttal, is hasty generalization, because you are coming to conclusions that my probabilities are wrong, even before I have attempted to calculate them. You are saying my experiment is poor compared to a scientific one, but I never said that my personal experiment was anything more than intellectual amusement. For example, I have only done four experiments. Two that were 1 in 192 and 1 in 150. I then read from someone who has actually read and understood my points and not tried to rebut me, someone with knowledge of probability, that my aim was poor, that a random process can achieve better. I heeded the person that has actually engaged me in an intellectually honest manner, and done two further experiments, getting a result of 1 in 31 and 1 in 59. I may even be able to improve that result, but since this is all provisional, and I am not making any claims, then why does it matter so much?Why are a lot of atheists trying to shoot down provisional, intellectual masturbation, when I have never proposes ANY official result, and never proposed ANY valid conclusion? (mikey KNOWS why, so the question is rhetorical, because it's all about worldviews, and motives, and agendas, and biases)So then I asked others, to try the most precise method.Now think for a moment, short of actually finding out the page number, and actually turning to the page, (1 in 1), then is it not reasonable to expect that there would be an actual probability? which is why I asked Paul K about it. But if you had read the thread you would have known that my experiment was not to find out a probability, it was just an experiment, because it interests me. Nor did I state that it counted as a scientific test.It seems people are reasoning that because there are a load of reasonings that may or may not apply to me (elephant hurling), that I can't arrive at a probability.But that is not rational in itself. No matter how many elephants are hurled at me, whether they be genuinely applicable or not, the point still remains that there is only so much a person can do in order to hit a scripture, short of actually opening the page to it.Now you may think, "what about page memory, what about post-hoc reasoning", but think for a moment, even if we eliminate everything, you are still not going to get a probability of 1 in 1. And if you are, then I should be able in fake-prayer, to now ask for one of those scripture I have asked in the past, and receive it. But I won't, because I have tried that experiment four times, and it doesn't tend to happen, which logically means that I can at the very least conclude that it is not going to be all that probable.That's because even with aiming, it's just not an easy thing to do. Now if I am wrong - please test and see if I am. But your test will differ to mine, because of different variables. Your page memories will be different, you will be able to turn to Acts, whereas there is a 100% chance I won't. You see, I have a brain too, Taq, I can think too, and indeed, tend to do a better job of it when I do, than many of you.Otherwise what you are stating is akin to saying, "it is NOT suspicious when someone has a string of successes in a casino".Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

Dr.A, I'm sure in your own mind it seems like this; The term doesn't change what you argued. So it's a moot point.You still gave a list of two types of things.1. Things that actually have and do occur
2. Things that actually do not occur.You then ASSIGNED everything that actually does occur, to "not God" and you ASSIGNED everything that does not occur, to, "God". That you did not directly state this, doesn't matter, what matters is that it is the real form of your argument, and I detected that real form..But it's tautologous, a rigged game. Please notice, in this example, you never lose, and are never wrong, GUARANTEED.Just think about if for a moment. How can I disprove you? Only by showing an example of something that we KNOW doesn't occur, occurring, which won't happen because those things don't tend to happen.It's a win-win situation you have created for yourself. But it doesn't prove much. For all you know, there are miracles that are NEVER detectable. I might have had cancer last year, and God healed me without me even knowing. But you would say, "didn't occur!"I remember last year I was crossing over in traffic on my bicycle, rode to the middle of the road, and for no reason I knew I was acting upon, turned around and went back to the end of the other road. I then saw a car driven by a yob, pull out, right in the place where I would have been sitting on my bicycle. But you would say, "so what, didn't occur, just a happy coincidence"That's fine, I don't expect you to see it as significant. Indeed, I don't expect you to see ANYTHING as significant, because you have already concluded that nothing would satisfy you as evidence, except the kind you can define so that it will never happen.You might then say, "but why doesn't it ever happen". But it's TOO LATE for you to complain, because you already have the knowledge of what does and does not happen. If your argument was genuine, you would have to ask someone that has never been theist or atheist, to "qualify" evidence of God's existence, but they must not be able to "know" the things that do tend to occur and do not tend to occur.Most reasonable people would say, "amazing design", but you won't because that's something that you have dismissed, you count that as evidence of NOT God, when actually such evidence is FOR God.You are not objective by any means, but like most anti-theists, you do have a scientific varnish you paint your arguments with. But your real motives are plainly clear. Perhaps you yourself don't realize your own motives, it might be the case, humans, as we have been told, are full of errors, so it seems reasonable to also assume that anti-theists are also prone to errors, given they are also human.

There is no point in me aimlessly trying to defend every little thing I say. The thread has become spaghetti, and folk want a piece of mikey-meat, left, right and centre.I shall not respond at this stage, to anything more. I am tired mentally, because of the additional problem of Faith turning on me for no apparent reason.I shall return in a week or two, and then continue with my provisional intellectual masturbation. If anyone wants to enjoy that type of thing with me, we shall talk about it then, ON topic.

Without commenting on whether or not you are duping yourself, you have not eliminated all of the possibilities for so doing. One easy source of error lies in the fact that you determine what constitutes success only after the trials are performed. Certainly you know before hand whether you are doing the 'control' part of the experiment or the 'active' part of the experiment, and you also know at the time you are evaluating the results whether you were seeking divine guidance or whether you were relying on yourself.Such experiments are particularly flaw-prone when the criteria for a match is subjective. If you truly want to know whether your are doing better than when you force things, your going to have to eliminate every source of bias possible.I know that my wife frequently 'comes across' Bible verses that she thinks I need to read and heed. I generally take her recommendations seriously, primarily because they've been screened by my wife and she knows me and my circumstances pretty doggone well. You know yourself pretty well too, so certainly I'm not trying to denigrate what you find in the Bible. There is plenty of wisdom to be found there. But I highly doubt your experiments are going to uncover much of anything.

No. Perhaps you would let me state my argument, you get on with stating yours. What I'm wondering is not why these things don't happen, but why you don't ask for them. The Bible is full of such things --- the Red Sea parting, water turning into wine, the sun standing still in the sky over Gibeon at the petition of Joshua, the dead rising from the grave, etc. The Bible assures us, furthermore, that "with God all things are possible"; and according to Jesus "Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Finally, I note that in your theology God is omnipotent --- it is just as easy for him to raise the dead as to cure a nasty case of the snuffles.So what I am wondering is why you don't ask God to do the things that I think are impossible but your Bible tells you are not.I'm not asking why such things don't happen. I know perfectly well why they don't happen. I'm asking why you never ask for them to happen; why you behave as though they can't happen; why you act as though you think we atheists are right and you'd be wasting your time.---Now, you apparently want to talk about a completely different question. I'll address yours, if you'll address mine. But it is not my "defining" things that stops them from happening. I say, for example, that it is impossible to walk on water. You believe that it is possible (if God wills it) and has happened (because he did) and consequently could happen again (if he willed it again) someplace where I could watch, to my great confusion and confutation. The fact that I think this won't happen won't stop it from happening, because my thoughts are not causally efficacious. Nor would it stop me from noticing if I did see it happening in front of me. But such a person would be unable to recognize evidence of God's existence. Such a person would not, for example, see anything more remarkable or suggestive of the divine in the claim that "Jesus turned water into wine" than "Fred turned a ball of wool into a scarf"; "Jesus walked on water" than "Fred walked on the sidewalk"; "Jesus multiplied loaves and fishes" than "Fred multiplied three by six". It is precisely knowledge of "the things that do tend to occur and do not tend to occur" that makes you think, when you read the Bible, that there was something special about Jesus, that he was God in human form and Fred isn't. Whereas the sort of person you postulate wouldn't be able to tell that Jesus was more remarkable than Fred.

I've been trying to tell that to Christians for years. You don't need God to part the Red Sea. All you need is timing. Wind dries up the marshes, we cross; rain floods the marshes, Pharaoh's army gets drownded. Coincidence? Miracle of timing? How can you tell the difference?

You may want your hypothesis to be true. Therefore, you may subconsciously rig the experiment to pass the null hypothesis. That is the inherent problem in your experimental design. This is why you need a blind. You can't be the scientist and the subject. That is the long and short of it. You can't determine a probability until you can determine that the dice are fair, to put it another way. What you need is a level of independence between the test and the result. If you are doing it yourself, there is no independence whatsoever. If you were to pray for a specific result, and then have others produce the result without knowing what you prayed for, then that would be a much, much better experiment.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

With the lottery, it's a shot at 6 numbers, 6 goes at 6 of 49. But the numbers change each week, so the chances are the same again, unlike a pin-number, that doesn't change if the account holder doesn't change it.So the 6 becomes our one group. so the first number is a shot at any one of six numbers out of 49. 49/6, then the second shot would be 48/5, then 47/4 then 46/3, 45/2, 44/1. We divide, now we multiply.This is because each number is a shot less, and a number less, available. So then we would multiply the numbers, once we have divided them, by each of the individual odds. = roughly 14 million to 1.But with a 4-digit pin number, the numbers stay the same, and you are having a specific shot at a specific number each time, so we don't lose a digit each time. So it's 1 in 10, times the next which is also 1 in 10 because we can use the same pin number twice. For example, if our pin number is 4444, so then "4" can be used on the second try.1,1 1,2 1,3 1,4 1,5
2,2 2,1 2,3 2,4 2,5
3,1 3,2 3,3 3,4 3,5
4,1 4,2 4,3 4,4 4,5
5,1 5,2 5,3 5,4 5,5The above is for two tries at hitting the same page in a 5 page book given a blank page opposite. 2 in 5 or 1 in 2.5, you divide if it's two shots at it. In a draw it would be different if you can only have one number once, so if you guess between 1 and 5, and have two goes, there wouldn't be an option of 1,1 because you could only choose "1" once.So you could have;1,2 1,3 1,4 1,5
2,1 2,3 2,4 2,5
3,1 3,2 3,4 3,5
4,1 4,2 4,3 4,5
5,1 5,2 5,3 5,420 combinations, of which contain the correct number of "4", 8 times, so 8 in 20 or 1 in 2.5. The odds are the same but the combinations are less because you always divide rather than multiply. You multiply with a chain of coincidences. So if you throw a ball up and it lands precisely on a circle you draw on the ground, randomly, and you predicted it, and you then predict it again, and it happened again, you multiply it by the combinations of "possible spaces" the ball can hit.MY APPLICATION OF PROBABILITYWith Numbers 23, there was about 60 pages, with 30 openings, and one "real" shot at it, with no page memory for this one. 1 in 30.With Isaiah 22 it's different, it is a fairly heavy page memory, I was aiming at about 50 spaces in area, but there are at least 4 heavy page memories in that area, so I will assume it would be one of the four such pages I would likely land on, so 1 in 4.With Habbakuk, there is about 30 openings and about 4 shots at it, so 4 in 30 or, 1 in 7.5, because you always divide. But now we multiply the chain of incidents because I had three prayer requests to "hit" three specific scriptures, on three consecutive nights;1 in 7.5
X 1 in 4
X 1 in 30
TOTAL = 1 in 900.Of course, ultimately I know that those odds are silly, there is no way 1 in 4 for Isaiah 22 is correct, given I have attempted to specifically hit such scriptures on purpose, and seldom can achieve anything better than one hit in 20 tries.Also no matter what I claimed, it would be pointed out by people that page-memories are certainly at play, to which I would ask a logical question;"Does this mean that only the pages mike hits in prayer, have page memories and all the ones he doesn't select, don't?"So then, that is a silly belief. To suppose only the ones I select are "magic pages that know mike's thumb" is folly in the extreme. The anti-mikeys can't just state that page memory is applicable when mike is praying, and that they only apply to those pages. They must also apply to all the other pages, as there is a level of memory for each one.Also don't forget, there are overt page memories but because they are so overt, I know about them.Faith said I was doing all this to confirm some kind of strange devilish practice. I would like to point out that I engage in intellectual pursuits just for the sake of it. For example if I played a mathematics quiz, it wouldn't be because I loved satan's clothing fashion, it would just be for the sake of getting fun from solving a puzzle. Ultimately I always knew I couldn't reconstruct the event that happened, for one thing my memory isn't going to be perfect, as the event was not planned, but I'm not stupid enough to believe that something strange didn't happen. I'm sorry, but to say that would to be a false witness. Ultimately what happened can only mean something to me, I never expected it to mean much to you. The figure of 1 in 900 is overly skeptical/strict. You can't achieve 1 in 4, it's not possible unless there is an overt variable at play.(Just to show how much I was un-biased, my figure before this thread in my ignorance, was nearly 1 in 2 million, I suspect most people would "go for" such a favourable figure but I think I have done okay in not doing what I wanted to do.)

Essentially your original argument is tautologous. Although it's understandable, or at least somewhat more consistent more with an atheist-type universe in that the consequent is confirmed (but can't be affirmed), which must be conceded for the sake of intellectual honesty, so I am not saying, "every point you make is worthless," by any means. Nor am I an atheist, I simply admit that in some instances, some arguments will tend to favour atheism more than theism. That this doesn't favour my cause is tough-cheese for me, I guess.( It's like when Dumbledore has to concede that Voldemort simply succeeds in scoring some points against their cause. That's just the way life is.)But your argument is like walking into a vegetarian restaurant and demanding;"I demand meat on my plate! Hah! See! your restaurant is rubbish!"The problem with such arguments is they rely on a truth that is always going to be true, I call this a rigged-game fallacy, or even an impossible standard. The "nirvana fallacy" is sometimes argued by anti-theists, when they argue something like the following;" well if a bird is designed, why isn't it indestructible? "Thus you can never refute them, they have guaranteed their argument, but please note that neither is a Ferrari indestructible, YET it is designed. Indeed, many race cars are even designed to destruct.You see, it's enough that a bird is a bird and a car is a car, they were not intended for anything more, to prove design would be to show design of aerodynamics, logically and factually.A "rock too heavy" is another, impossible-standard example, because it depends upon a tautology, that something intrinsically impossible, can't be possible, which is always true but tells us nothing, about a "nothing" such as a square-circle, or a "nonsense".We could say of the universe; "We expect natural explanations". The reason why this is tautologous is because it is always guaranteed to be true, and therefore tells us little to nothing, I could also state, "we expect to find car-parts in cars." In and of itself this reasoning just doesn't tell us much, for if God designed the universe, then such preconditions of intelligibility and consistency, are expected anyway. So it would be expressed in this form:" You have no common sense."
RESPONSE:
"Ah but they say people that are intelligent, tend not to have any common sense."But let's rehash the form using correct descriptions;" You don't have type of *intelligence X* "
RESPONSE:
" Ah but they say people that are intelligent, tend not to have intelligence."It's the same with your argument DR.A. If you need God to get a universe, then the universal conditions themselves can't be disproof of God. So then to refute hills you are standing on a hill to preach.First don't use God's fingers that you have borrowed, to type your message, and don't breathe His air while you refute me! And then we can speak!

QUIET! I'm about to demonstrate my mighty omnipotence by manifesting myself on the very edge of statistical significance!^** Russell's Teapot

And, for your enjoyment (since it's hard to find)Dropbox - dLvlb.jpg - Simplify your life