CronoDAS comments on Rationality Quotes April 2012 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Oscar_Cunningham 03 April 2012 12:42AM

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Comment author: CronoDAS 04 April 2012 08:21:29PM *  0 points [-]

After seeing quite a few examples, I've recently become very sensitive to comparisons of an abstract idea of something with an objective something, as if they were on equal footing. Your question explicitly says the Pope conversion is a legitimate non-shenanigans event, while not making the same claim of the lottery result. Was that intentional?

No, I just didn't think of it. (Assume that I meant that, if someone happens to have bought a 1-2-3-4-5-6 ticket, they would indeed be able to claim the top prize.)

Comment author: sixes_and_sevens 04 April 2012 10:19:18PM 1 point [-]

I might not have worded that very clearly.

You said that the Pope was definitely not joking, (or replaced by a prankster in a pope suit), but left it open as to whether the lottery result was actually a legitimate sequence of numbers drawn randomly from a lottery machine, or somehow engineered to happen.

In that sense, you're comparing a very definite unlikely event (the Pope actually converting to Islam) to a nominally unlikely event (1-2-3-4-5-6 coming up as the lottery results, for some reason that may or may not be a legitimate random draw). Was that intentional?

Comment author: CronoDAS 04 April 2012 11:16:27PM *  1 point [-]

No, but if someone successfully manages to rig the lottery to come up 1-2-3-4-5-6, and doesn't get caught, I'd count that as an instance. Similarly, if the reason the Pope issued the public statement was that his brother was being held hostage or something, and he recants after he's rescued, that's good enough, too; I just wanted to rule out things like April Fools jokes, or off-the-cuff sarcastic remarks.