Go after OBL's $$$$

[Luke Benjamin Weiger]

I'll take a stab at it: "Just because each of a large number of events is
individually hugely improbable doesn't mean that a few of the said events
won't occur."  To say that because an event is hugely improbable doesn't
mean that the event isn't probable is self-contradictory.

-- Luke

On Sun, 16 Sep 2001, Carrol Cox wrote:


> Just because an event is hugely improbable does not mean that it isn't
> probable. Possibly someone else can phrase this more elegantly. If the
> probability of Event X is (say) 1 out of 15 billion, and you have a
> universe of events numbered 100 trillion, then Event X is not only
> probable but virtually certain. It would be nearly impossible for no
> strange events to have occurred on Tuesday morning. Several hundred
> thousand wildly improbable events _certainly_ are occuring right now!
> And if something dramatic happens this afternoon, several thousand of
> those events will be trumpeted as having a connection with that dramatic
> event.
>
> Carrol
>