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

>>My evidence for this assertion is that you said you don't care what I say enough to think about it, and that it's all nonsense at the same time, which is self-contradictory because it requires thought to determine whether it might be true rather than nonsense, or relevant to the thread in question rather than spam.<<

Believe it or not, it's entirely possible for someone to read your posts, understand them and reject your 'conclusions'. In fact, reading them and understanding them makes it *more* likely for a person to reject your ideas.

And finally - this has come up before - do me a favour and learn to punctuate. What kind of sentence was that?

That's the ticket--criticize my punctuation.

We've been here with your use of "Believe me" before. You know I don't believe one can ignore the numbers and still understand the argument, and you have ignored the numbers at the very least.

Someone give me a shout when these threads get back to being interesting: I'm unsubbing.

Julzes dude, get help. You clearly need it.

Good! I hate liars.

>You don't predict that the Hittites are going to do something from a reading of what they did in the past.

No, but you can predict what future archaeological digs will find. We know that the Hittites did not have the internal combustion engine, from study of the level of technology they did have. Therefore we can confidently predict that we won't find cars in Hittite strata.

More usefully, if you've been following my discusion with Nog, you will have noticed that we can predict what types of pottery should be found in which strata, based on our differing hypotheses. Where our predicitons conflict, we have a potential disproof of one theory.

The is the (most common) definition of science: it is open to potential disproof. If your theory is incorrect, how can I disprove it?

Gif

If any significant part of my mathematical statements has been false, there you have proof that I don't know what I'm talking about at least. Have you checked any of them. Ask me about a specific coincidence that you want a probability of. I've just established for myself that there should be about 1/3 of a person (one Earth out three the same population should have me randomly) with my specific birth date and the same parallel translation of birthdates of same-generation relatives (granting that everyone has such a triad in some sense) from the specific triad of historical events, without requiring that they be born with the spread from mine of ten days, a month and 400 days (they can be born any year, in other words), and without regard for whether the central figure has the characteristics to know and study the relationships involved. This is not the kind of question you want a probability of, is it? It's a little difficult to make an abstract probability argument out of that one case, so let me do the word problem that I posed to wikipedia's help desk by hand and get back to you.

Giford: I'll tell you what that was first. I took ALLAH and GOD and converted them into numbers from base twenty-five and ALLAH and YAHXEH [sic--I made a digit error] from base 35 getting primes in all four cases (ALLAH in both bases) *as the first things checked*! I'll tell you what the probability of being able to do that at random from three singular nouns in English is (You can't verify they were the first things checked, of course, so you can't really test it for veracity). This is going to take a while. The bases were defined in analogy with hexadecimal (A=10, etc.), and such that they were minimal to allow the words to be numbers. GOD did not work out in base 35, but that was later checked, and I did not expect the coincidence there to continue. I did something stranger with BUDDHA that immediately was interesting also, but I am just checking this right now. Word to the wise is that I have a huge old coincidence in my personal memory about the game of Yahtzee, though I don't know what's become of my two witnesses (The one whose name I know had MS diagnosed a number of years ago and we have not been in touch about the matter since the day it happened or at all since before the diagnosis, so it's only a memory).

Hi Julzes,

Perhaps you haven't quite understood my question.

I'm not doubting that your maths is correct, as far as it goes (not that I've bothered to check any of it). What I am questioning is whether the coincidences are as unlikely as you think. Specifically, I think you are falling into the post-hoc fallacy.

Suppose I deal you a hand of cards. You look at them, do a few calculations and immediately say that the chances of me having dealt you *that exact hand* by chance alone are less that 1 in 600 billion and therefore either I cheated or aliens did it.

But the thing is that there are over 600 billion possible hands in cards - whichever one you got would have been that unlikely. Similarly - to take your 'birthday coincidence' - how many relatives do you have, how many ways could you write their birth-dates, how many historical events could you link them to, and how many sequences of numbers would you consider 'significant' (squares, primes, repeated digits - in base 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...)? Multiply all that up, and I suggest that it is *very likely indeed* that someone could find a coincidence like the one you describe. And that's just restricted to birth-dates of relatives. Now multiply that up by all the phone numbers, bank accounts, post codes (ZIP codes to you ), addresses, numerical-values-of-names, etc, you've ever had.

It'd be pretty alarming if you *couldn't* find a coincidence.

Gif

Next time you post, I'll be waiting with proof to a specific case that must be quickly read and removed from both our spaces--private info. I'll be clicking on this conversation pretty readily starting in three minutes. I have to find the thread it's on.

OK I was just responding to what I saw on this thread as its one of the few I read on h2g2 at the moment - not enough time to keep up with everything. Nonetheless, I think being polite to people even if you think their ideas are nonsensical tends to be better.

I was going to post something on the post hoc argument, but Gif's post above says exactly what I was going to say. Almost impossible things happen all the time. The fact that you have the exact genome you have, for example, is so mind bogglingly improbable you could probably use it to power the Heart of Gold. And yet there we all are...

What about the very fact that I know plenty about the post hoc ergo propter hoc issue already, Dogster. I placed 11th on the USAMO and was an ASA with high test scores (actuarial designation)? Does the fact that I understand the issue have any weight or are you going to pin me down to a listing and calculation upon that listing of all of my coincidences and how they fit into context.

???

People seem to be pretending to be stupid, including me. I could just answer people's questions without getting huffy.

The answer is No. Quite clearly the nature of my coincidences does not fall under the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, but you actually have to look at the probability that anyone anywhere would have certain things similar occur to them with our understanding of nature, not invoking a non-human intelligence. You have to look at my data, and if you don't you're just a minor beligerent that I can ignore.

'them'-->'him or her' for proper grammar.

If the mysterious 3-minute data is for my benefit, you can find my email on my PS, which might make it easier.

I don't see why your data doesn't fall under post hoc. Your qualifications don't affect that - you need a reason why you chose those *specific* data to look at, *other than* that they give an unlikely result.

Gif

Giford:
A) I have four *closest same-generation relatives that I know of*, and one of them--the one who taught me chess--I never knew the birthday of.
B) The only triad of dates having to do with nuclear weapons is what it is.
C) The plurality of my non-sleeping hours over the last ten years have been spent on computer chess opening research.
D) 7061964=4*1765491 is to the date of the Trinity Site test as 6071964=4*1517991 is to the date that Garry Kasparov lost at chess to a computer for the first time in match play (what would be the equivalent of losing the title of world champion).
My cousins whose birth dates I know were born (on anniversaries of the historical dates concerning nuclear weapons) ten days and one month to the day after me with the third and myself spanning 400 days, this number of days being the square of the number of years involved (1945-65).
E) Since you asked about other relatives, my parents were, like me, born two days after holidays--3 January 1942 and 16 February 1943, and there was a little more of this with other relatives' birthdays to cue me to be looking for something strange.
F) When I discovered the date of the Trinity Site test in January of 2006, I also discovered the relationship (365+1/4)^4=17797577732+7^2/2^8
G) Later, on 03/06/09 (my American style of date), I discovered (365+1/4)^2=3^7*61+9/16.
H) I claim a whole complex of mathematical results of some significance related to the number 365.25 aside from the prior two without giving the data explicitly right here and now.
I) I have more claims, but this should be a good starting point.

Okay, I sent you the simple way to find my phone number in the message, but I should tell you that my Area Code is 610. Right now, you can only verify the fact that I live hear by what is in two seperate streams, because I haven't got permission to actually give out the phone number--I've got great terms considering I receive disability (Just Expenses!)--and I think the phone is on the fritz anyway.

DOH!: "live here"--about the phone I guess that was.