h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Me and a friend have discovered something not only profound but of incredible importance to the multiverse and its future.

At every instant a decision is made. like, right...now! Im holding the keyboard above my head (its tricky to explain). Now, I CHOSE to hold the keyboard above my head when there is an infinite number of other things i could have done at that point in time, right? And since there is an infinite number of instants (that is, in time) then the COMBINED PROBABILITY THAT ANYTHING WILL HAPPEN AT ANYTIME IN THE MULTIVERSE IS PRECISELY - INFINITY SQUARED!!!

Now...any comments?
Are we as mad as Cuban llamas hunting the venomous killer hedgehogs... or are we just slightly mad?

Prob'ly just slightly mad....
Here another little connundrum-type thingy...

As I type the word 'Bacon' am I seeing myself type it or am I remembering seeing myself type it...?

Answers on a postcard....

I like the way you think Toxin Avenger.
What about this?:

There is a hypothesis that our entire personal existence has already happened and it happened in an instant. A single point in time. Therefore our life has already happened and our brains have already seen our life, but since it happens in an instant our brains have/are rearranging the events into a logical, concievable order which is what we are experiencing right now.
perhaps that explains "seeing in to the future"
oooooo....spooky

So you're saying that everything has allready happened, and our brains are replaying everything in slow motion.... cool.

But a little difficult to rationalise: If everything that has, is ,and will happen, has in effect allready happened, then time itself is practically non-existant. This would then call in to question the observations relating to things like the speed on sound, light, and arbritarily random events such as radioactrive decay. Hmmmmm!

I appear to have gone cross-eyed....

Forgot something....

Amir Azcel said that " Randomness is randomness only because of out ignorance"

I like that.

Current theory suggests that everything that has ever and will ever happen can be described be a single equation, but an equation so complex as to defy comprehension (I nicked that quote of Spaced")...

Now I'm cross-eyed...

fortunately infinity squared is stil infinity and therefore any drives based on it will not have degraded performance, and still do the same parsecs to the photon as before.

In reply to Post no. 4...

Didn't Ford Prefect say "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly-so"???

Hmm. In the total multiverse, that is, every possible universe containing every single decision made and not made, infinite universes if you will, wouldn't the probability of any single event happening be 1 to 1? After all, it HAS happened somewhere.

Actually, upon further consideration probability becomes a completely bogus concept. Given the circumstances outlined above, there is NO probability. Nothing probably happens, it does. The only effective use of probability is: How probable is it for event 'X' to happen here and now and in such a way that I can observe it happening?

Not neccesarily. The set of even numbers is infinitely large, but the probability that it contains 3 is absolutely zero.

Why should logic be constant in the multiverse?

i know the answer is infinity anyway, but by that logic shouldn't the probability be infinity times infinity?

oh and plus u r assuming that there are infinite number of possibilities also u r assuming that time is infinite

Somewhere, in some universe all these assumptions are in fact true.

Solomon here is quite right...

If we assume that there is an infinite number of parallel universes where every possible circumstance is carried out then the probability that something will happen is 1 TO 1!!! Again, its just a matter of the probability that, that certain event will occur now and here...

I have something very important to add:
Huh?
I have actually gone surfing in parallel dimension's-but I was quite disappointed,as there is actually only one-and the only difference is that they say "Cheese" more
Now who's madder than a llama sounding box?

Let us assume that we are all not bound for the peanut farm on Riga VI,and presuming "Everything that will happen has happened".
Why not journey down to the local bar on Alpha Centauri ,order say a warm pint of beer and a packet of salted nuts, sit down and watch your life go by....


Blarty, the illiterate keeper of the orange sash

Do not adjust your brain, there is a fault in reality due to lack of alcohol or equivalent substances. Why not simply sit back on some far flung planet, take a gulp of the local alpha centurion brew (perhaps a Pan galactic garggle blaster would be contraindicated for musings on probability )and abandon yourself to the inevitability of it all.
"To do is to be" said Rousseau. "To be is to do" said Satre. "Dobedobedo" said Sinatra (or was it Scubedo). So think on, who's the wiser?

......
Cosmicpolitans on the multiverse. Bottoms up

ummmmm..... to drink is to pee, said the MoGgie.
slurrrrrrrrp

That would mean that when we have flashbacks or have scenes from our lives "flash" before our eyes, our brains have overloaded temporarily and are very rapidly playing back pieces from the one instant which our lives were lived, right or wrong?
~The Curious Protector of Leafy Seadragons

Now to gum up the works:

What is the probability of something NOT happening? Taking a page from Mr. Adams himself, what is the improbability of any given event occuring in an infinite universe/multiverse? Or does it all just come down to monkeys and typewriters?