statistical thinking, religion, and the matrix

[PLOlover]

http://www.simulation-argument.com/matrix.html

Interesting article. By means of Bayes Theorum we are all most likely computer simulations.

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
The Simulation Argument: Why the Probability that You Are Living in a Matrix is Quite High (http://www.simulation-argument.com/matrix.html)

By means of Bayes Theorem we are all most likely computer simulations.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not at all.

Here's a crucial and quite typical mistake in the article:

[ QUOTE ]
We should accept as true at least one of the following three propositions:

(1) The chances that a species at our current level of development can avoid going extinct before becoming technologically mature is negligibly small.
...


[/ QUOTE ]

I already claimed that we cannot work on probabilistic scenarios when speculating on what's driving the cosmos, if anything does. The reason is that, when we take initial state A (going back a significant amount of time, e.g. two hundred million years) and compare it to state B (which would be about now), the ways that A could "lose its way" so that B would never "happen" are so numerous as to approach infinity, if the word has any meaning. Fooling around with probabilistic notions is useless in such a scope.

I put it to you that the probabilities of
1. You being an ant that was crushed by the foot of a soldier of Hannibal crossing the Alps,
2. You being who you are,
3. The human race never existing at all,
4. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards meeting (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=3075392&page=34&view= expanded&sb=6&o=&fpart=) on the train the morning that Mick was carrying some old blues records,

have all the same value, and they all approach 1/infinity.

[PLOlover]

I've petitioned the great cpu to cut back your resources.