Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!sunybcs!colonel
From: colonel@sunybcs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: British Museum
Message-ID: <1989@sunybcs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 18-Jan-87 09:51:52 EST
Article-I.D.: sunybcs.1989
Posted: Sun Jan 18 09:51:52 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Jan-87 05:40:49 EST
References: <355@unc.unc.UUCP> <1171@whuts.UUCP> <780@houem.UUCP>
Organization: Jack of Clubs Precision Instruments
Lines: 23

> Put another way: the hypothesis that all the works in the British
> Museum could have been created by chance is rejected.

But they were created by chance!  Think about the probability that
all those authors would write just exactly those books!  Change just
one comma somewhere, and you have a different British Museum.

Remember, the odds against anything that really happens are enormous.


	"As the principle of insufficient reason rests on ignorance,
	 it would seem to follow that the calculus of probability
	 was most effective when used by those who had an 'equally
	 balanced ignorance.' However well men approximate to this
	 ideal, philosophers and mathematicians hold themselves in
	 higher esteem, and so the principle has fallon on lean days."

			--Kasner and Newman, _Mathematics and the Imagination_
-- 
Col. G. L. Sicherman
UU: ...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!colonel
CS: colonel@buffalo-cs
BI: colonel@sunybcs, csdsiche@ubvms