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To: antiRepublicrat
According to your perception, because you value that particular combination. But it's not statistically any less likely than any other combination.

No, but the probability of getting a combination that I value is extremely low, which is why I would find it astonishing to get one.

Take a better analogy: A lottery machine containing 100 billion blue balls and just one red ball. The lottery machine randomly selects a ball. If the selected ball is red I would find that astonishing because the odds of that happening were so low (this is entirely valid astonisment, showing that retrospective astonishment is not always a fallacy)

An argument parallel to your above argument would be that my astonishment at getting a red ball is only due to my perception because I value red balls, and pointing out that the red ball had just as much chance of being selected as any particular blue ball. But it isn't the particular ball that astonishes me, it is the particular color of that ball.

220 posted on 12/05/2005 11:31:20 AM PST by bobdsmith
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To: bobdsmith
... the probability of getting a combination that I value is extremely low, which is why I would find it astonishing to get one.

The point of my card-shuffle post is not that our particular biosphere isn't unlikely, because it is. It's just that whatever biosphere gets produced will be equally unlikely. Ours is no more unlikely than any other. If you went back to 4 billion years ago and started the whole thing up all over again, you'd probably end up with a totally different mix of species, none of them exactly like what we have now. But this "shuffle of the cards" is ours. We're unique. Which is why -- contrary to the endlessly repeated claims of the creationists -- the evolutionary point of view places a higher value on humanity than one where we could be wiped out and started up again at the whim of a deity.

226 posted on 12/05/2005 11:44:22 AM PST by PatrickHenry (Virtual Ignore for trolls, lunatics, dotards, common scolds, & incurable ignoramuses.)
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To: bobdsmith
No, but the probability of getting a combination that I value is extremely low, which is why I would find it astonishing to get one.

That's the kicker, what you value. What we all value, of course, is our present existence, our present form of life. If things had worked out a bit different, there could be another form of life here, valuing its outcome.

If the selected ball is red I would find that astonishing because the odds of that happening were so low (this is entirely valid astonisment, showing that retrospective astonishment is not always a fallacy)

I would be astonished, too. However, now think of that tank having a billion different colors in it and you didn't care which one was picked. Are you now astonished that the red one came up?

228 posted on 12/05/2005 11:55:11 AM PST by antiRepublicrat
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