Re: Small probabilities

I've watched, and even participated in the past in this discussion. But,
I think there is a piece of this discussion that is missing.
Let me see if I can get this into words (understandable ones!).

What seems to me to be missing is something that flows out of a piece of
the chaos/complexity business.
In that realm, when one puts a couple of simple constraints into place
in a rich operational context, sometimes surprisingly, perhaps even
stunningly complex consequences can result.
The "chaos game" (Sierpinski triangle) is one example, and the Julia set
(or Mandelbrodt set) is another [both admittedly fractal examples].

In the present discussion, it seems to me that the act of introducing
even a relatively small amount of structure into the letters/words of
the basic Genesis 1:1 scripture in consideration of numerical
equivalences and significances in Hebrew might alone be quite capable of
creating a great deal of collateral order and systematic structure in
other representations, such as those discovered by Vernon. I am not
enough of a mathematician or analyst to sort out whether this is in fact
the case, but it sure seems plausible. Just playing with that
Sierpinski triangle algorithm the first time is a mind-boggler. The
Julia set is remarkable in its aesthetic appeal (when graphed). Why
should that even be? The idea of mapping the mathematics into a visual
representation is sort of incidental to the underlying mathematics, but
it is that (collateral) visual representation that captures our interest.

My sense is that Vernon's gematrial discoveries could easily be another
example of unintended but beautiful collateral consequence that flows
from a relatively small amount of intentional gematrial ordering of the
textual elements of Genesis 1:1.

Anyone know of a way to do some simple structures to chase this notion?

JimA

Randy Isaac wrote:

> Iain,
> You and I are in so much agreement that we can't get a good
> argument going. By all means, probabilities and statistics are vital
> in scientific methodology, particularly in the areas you cite. I
> would suggest that this is quite different from determining whether a
> unique event was 'intelligently designed." In this particular case,
> we know that many surprising coincidences can occur and, in my
> opinion, we are not justified in jumping to a conclusion of a
> deliberate supernatural message being conveyed. I am tempted to say
> that "God wouldn't communicate to his people in that way" but I have
> stated elsewhere that arguments such as "God wouldn't do it that way"
> aren't compelling or appropriate. So I won't say it. And you'll all
> be glad to know that this will be my last post on this topic.
>
> Randy
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Iain Strachan <mailto:igd.strachan@gmail.com>
> To: Randy Isaac <mailto:randyisaac@adelphia.net>
> Cc: asa@calvin.edu <mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 11:03 PM
> Subject: Re: Small probabilities
>
>
>
> On 1/11/06, Randy Isaac <randyisaac@adelphia.net
> <mailto:randyisaac@adelphia.net>> wrote:
>
> Vernon,
>
> With all due respect to Iain, this is a point with which I
> disagree.
> Per our previous discussion, the only argument offered against
> coincidence
> is very low probability, which I argued is, in general,
> insufficient to
> prove that something is other than random or a
> coincidence. It can be a
> good "search warrant" or cause to search for other
> explanations but, lacking
> such evidence, coincidence is by no means ruled out.
>
>
> As someone who works in probabilistic modelling, I'll have to take
> issue with Randy on this one. It seems to me that many scientific
> deductions are based on probability and statistics. You conduct a
> double-blind placebo controlled trial of a new drug and collect
> the statistics on it. You want to know if the drug has any
> effect. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't for individual
> cases. So you collect the stats for a large number of patients,
> and determine the probability that the measured benefits could
> have occurred by coincidence.
>
> You said, Randy that coincidence is by no means ruled out. Of
> course, I agree you can NEVER rule out coincidence, but if the
> probability of the perceived beneficial effect of a trialled drug
> occurring by coincidence is less than 0.01, then statistically it
> is deemed "highly significant". Probably enough to justify the
> claim that the drug is useful. There is nothing magical about the
> 0.01; probability is always a grey area and there has to be some
> point where you draw the line in the sand, and say "we believe
> this is a real effect".
>
> Another example might be the link between smoking and heart
> disease/lung cancer. I'll bet the tobacco industries are
> promoting the idea that it isn't proven. Yes, of course it isn't
> proven, but the evidence is overwhelming. But "evidence" is a
> probabilistic thing here (statistical studies etc). Indeed, the
> term "evidence" has a specific mathematical definition in Bayesian
> statistics.
>
> Now Vernon's "evidence" might overwhelm or underwhelm different
> people, but that just means they draw the line in the sand at
> different points. But I'm afraid it won't do just to say
> "coincidence is not ruled out". I don't disagree there, but then
> it's not ruled out in the examples I gave above. Would you smoke
> 60 cigarettes a day because the evidence that it's bad for you
> could be just a coincidence? Depends how badly you want to smoke,
> I guess.
>
> Best wishes,
> Iain
>
>
>
Received on Wed Jan 11 23:51:36 2006