Question from Bubsy:
Are we actually cursed? Hear me out:
Last year, our car got hit 5 times while it was parked! I could see this happening once or even twice, but 5 times????
This year our car got dinged twice in parking lots, many many oil repairs, yesterday a person driving next to us made a lane change and swiped us, then today a stone hit our car, and broke the windshield. We just cannot catch a break. All our religious friends say it is a curse.
Answer by SmartLX:
Your religious friends would do well to check whether there is even such a thing as a curse of the right kind in their doctrines. They do exist in Christianity for instance, being powered by the devil so to speak, but simply accepting Jesus is protection enough that you can never be affected. (See here.) So if you’re religious yourself you can answer the question of whether it even CAN be a curse in your worldview.
If you’re getting hit a lot while parked, there are all kinds of obvious questions about where you park, how big your car is, your own driving skills, etc. Similar practical considerations can significantly affect the probabilities of all your other misfortunes. The recurring oil issue for example is down to the condition of your car and the competence (and ethics) of your regular mechanic. All up you’ve mentioned a total of nine events over two years (not counting the oil thing) which could of course be explained by pure bad luck, or some bad luck combined with poor general attitudes to driving in your area.
From a statistical perspective, someone who serves as an outlier (i.e. getting “favoured” way more than the average) is always going to wonder whether something special is going on, but in the vast population of motorists there are almost certain to be some outliers at any given time. (What are the chances that no one in the whole country will be super unlucky?) The chances of winning the lottery are incredibly slim, but there’s regularly a jackpot winner from somewhere (though they really come up against the odds when it comes to winning a second time).
My advice is simply to continue to drive and park with care, and if no one is actually out there gunning for you, you’ll eventually tend towards the average rate of car-damaging events, whatever that is. I tried to look it up but there aren’t many statistics outside of fatal accidents.
Tag: probability
From Infinity To Certainty?
Question from Blake (lost, then recovered – sorry Blake!):
If there is an unlimited number of universes with an unlimited number of possibilities, then would there be a universe in which there doesn’t exist other universes?
Answer by SmartLX:
No.
Unlimited possibilities do not necessarily mean every possibility. The set of multiples of two (2, 4, 6, 8…) has infinite numbers, but no odd numbers because odd numbers are not multiples of two. The question uses the premise that there is an unlimited number of universes, and with that established the infinite universes you are not in are not negated by the one you are in, no matter what kind of universe it is. The basic qualities of the set of universes make a solitary universe impossible.
A similar argument is sometimes used to establish the existence of a god. See the piece that just went up. (That piece is the reason I found your question, due to similar subject matter.)
Considering Every Miracle at Once
Question from Jacob:
Hello, so it’s me again, got some more questions for ya. Throughout history, there have been many reports of supernatural phenomena. Most of them usually have a religious undertone, for example, some people levitate others do healings, sometimes divine or demonic figures appear. In any case, these reports range from various cultures and time periods seen by hundreds of thousands of people which continues to this day. How could someone have imagined all this?
Answer by SmartLX:
“Someone” didn’t. Millions of people across the globe imagined it all cumulatively over a period of millennia. That’s a lot of imagination.
To say it’s all pure imagination is an oversimplification, of course. Here are some more specific sources.
– Unexplained phenomena will be rationalised in terms of whatever faith-based supernatural concepts people hold, simply because it’s in the right category. It looks like magic, my god is magic, therefore my god did it. This is a formal logical fallacy, but it’s as far as many people’s thinking goes.
– When religion holds social or political power, it affects the historical record. If priests claim an occurrence, or claim credit for an event on behalf of the ruling god, few dare dispute them.
– Any supernatural effect which is faked, or exploited for material gain whether faked or mistaken, is far more effective when linked to the majority religion. It goes from a curiosity to a possible call to action, and compels believers to consider it very carefully. They must think, “Why did my god do this, and how should I react?” This gives it a much bigger profile in the public consciousness.
Similarly to my approach to prophecies, each claim of a supernatural event has more possibilities than the false dilemma that it was either genuinely supernatural or it was made up from nothing. Once you consider a few of your favourite stories from the standpoint of just how many different ways they could have come about, the sheer number of supernatural claims throughout history is severely tempered by the high probability that any given event was something other than an act of God.