When someone says “wow there was only a 30% chance of that happening!” But wouldn’t it be 100% because it DID happen and due to an (probably) infinite amount of unseen variables? In this way would this mean the universe is deterministic?
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Roll a 6-sided die. You have a 1/6 chance to roll a 6.
You rolled a 1! You had a 1/6 chance to roll a 6; it just didn’t happen.
Roll again. You rolled a 6! You had a 1/6 chance to do that, and sure enough, it happened!
>“wow there was only a 30% chance of that happening!”
The operative word here is “WAS”. Yes now that it has happened, there is a 100% chance that that’s the outcome that happened. But before that, there WAS a 30% chance that that outcome would be the one that happened. When people say “there was only a [%] chance of that happening”, they mean that’s what the probability was before the event happened, given only the information available at the time.
If you flip a coin and get heads, there *was* a 50% chance of that happening – because before the flip, the odds of heads *was* 50%.
“The past has a probability of 100%” is a statement that helps avoid getting too into this argument (for better or worse). It can mean “the past has happened, and probability no longer has any effect on it”, which is where you seem to be coming from. We shouldn’t base too many of our decisions on the theoretical chance of something specific happening if the chance of it happening is already in the past (sunk cost fallacy, as an example).
But probability is fun! And even if we can’t change the past, looking at the theoretical probabilities can give us appreciation for how special the present is by examining how special the past was. So when somebody talks about a past event with a probability, they are talking about theoretical events that didn’t happen, not the 100% of the past. They are talking about how special the current state of things are, and how randomness can measure the theoretical chances.
It’s misused fairly often (so what if my combination of genes has a small chance of existing, I’m me and even if I was different I’d just be a different me that also had a small chance of existing), but generally thinking of “past random chance” as “how special past events are” instead will probably help you understand what people are talking about.
>“wow there was only a 30% chance of that happening!”
The operative word here is “WAS”. Yes now that it has happened, there is a 100% chance that that’s the outcome that happened. But before that, there WAS a 30% chance that that outcome would be the one that happened. When people say “there was only a [%] chance of that happening”, they mean that’s what the probability was before the event happened, given only the information available at the time.
If you flip a coin and get heads, there *was* a 50% chance of that happening – because before the flip, the odds of heads *was* 50%.
>“wow there was only a 30% chance of that happening!”
The operative word here is “WAS”. Yes now that it has happened, there is a 100% chance that that’s the outcome that happened. But before that, there WAS a 30% chance that that outcome would be the one that happened. When people say “there was only a [%] chance of that happening”, they mean that’s what the probability was before the event happened, given only the information available at the time.
If you flip a coin and get heads, there *was* a 50% chance of that happening – because before the flip, the odds of heads *was* 50%.
Think of it this way. If you flip a coin and it comes up Heads you would still say “There was a 50% chance of that happening” and not “there was a 100% chance of that happening”. Sure there was a 100% chance that it DID happen but that doesn’t affect the original likelihood that it happens, or the likelihood of it happening again.
Think of it this way. If you flip a coin and it comes up Heads you would still say “There was a 50% chance of that happening” and not “there was a 100% chance of that happening”. Sure there was a 100% chance that it DID happen but that doesn’t affect the original likelihood that it happens, or the likelihood of it happening again.
Think of it this way. If you flip a coin and it comes up Heads you would still say “There was a 50% chance of that happening” and not “there was a 100% chance of that happening”. Sure there was a 100% chance that it DID happen but that doesn’t affect the original likelihood that it happens, or the likelihood of it happening again.
I’m going to skip over “the universe is deterministic” because as far as I’m concerned it’s impossible to prove either way: we could be living in a simulation for all we know. What I can say is even if it is deterministic it’s impossible for us to understand how, so it might as well be random.
In terms of past events probabilities, I think the easiest way to compare is to consider a coin flip. You flip once, it’s tails. That was 50:50. So does that mean the next flip is guaranteed heads? Obviously not, it’s still 50:50.
Just because something happened doesn’t mean it was lways guaranteed. There were a large number of unknown variables at play which we simply have no way of understanding. Depending on who you ask at a (sub?) Atomic level it may even be truly random and influencing the coin flip.
I’m going to skip over “the universe is deterministic” because as far as I’m concerned it’s impossible to prove either way: we could be living in a simulation for all we know. What I can say is even if it is deterministic it’s impossible for us to understand how, so it might as well be random.
In terms of past events probabilities, I think the easiest way to compare is to consider a coin flip. You flip once, it’s tails. That was 50:50. So does that mean the next flip is guaranteed heads? Obviously not, it’s still 50:50.
Just because something happened doesn’t mean it was lways guaranteed. There were a large number of unknown variables at play which we simply have no way of understanding. Depending on who you ask at a (sub?) Atomic level it may even be truly random and influencing the coin flip.
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