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Maybe it's similar to the well known "more likely to be hit by a meteorite than to win the lottery" style statements. Obviously that's completely wrong: i've ne

by nn3 5y ago

Maybe it's similar to the well known "more likely to be hit by a meteorite than to win the lottery" style statements. Obviously that's completely wrong: i've never heard of anyone being hit by a meteorite, but people win the lottery every month. I'm not saying that they're actively lying, but it seems some assumptions in these frequentist's numbers are just not correct.

ehvatum 5y ago
There’s a confounding effect arising from the difficulty in comparing false negative rates between person-meteor-strike and person-lottery-jackpot. Whereas lottery-jackpot events are rarely misinterpreted as some prat dropping rubbish onto person, person-meteor-strike too often is.
withinboredom 5y ago
A lot more people try to win the lottery than jump in front of meteorites.
irrational 5y ago
https://astronomy.com/news/2020/05/death-from-above-7-unlucky-tales-of-people-killed-by-meteorites https://astronomy.com/news/2020/05/death-from-above-7-unluck... Just last year a woman had just gotten out of bed when a meteorite came through her ceiling and hit her pillow where her head had been.
- nn3 5y ago
  I was actually aware of that story. But she wasn't hit, so it doesn't invalidate my statement.
LorenPechtel 5y ago
They're not lying. It's just meteorite kills are very clumpy. I'm not a lottery player so I can't give a good estimate on the number of lottery winners, but for the major jackpots I'll guess many per year. AFIAK we have no documented meteorite deaths--but it looks like the destruction of Sodom (of biblical fame) was a meteorite. While obviously we have no death toll it's obviously a *lot* of years of major lottery wins. The atmosphere stops most of the stuff but when something's big enough to get through it makes quite a boom. (Chelyabinsk was half a megaton but was high enough up the blast only caused harm by throwing broken windows at people. Tunguska, however was a few megatons and got low enough to be a city-killer. All it blew up was forest for probably zero deaths, but had it fallen 7 hours earlier the world would be a different place because it would have wiped out Leningrad.)
- nn3 5y ago
  AFAIK the Sodom story was pretty much debunked https://retractionwatch.com/2021/10/01/criticism-engulfs-paper-claiming-an-asteroid-destroyed-biblical-sodom-and-gomorrah/ https://retractionwatch.com/2021/10/01/criticism-engulfs-pap...
  - LorenPechtel 5y ago
    Interesting! Pretty obviously some sloppy science but I'm not sure that's a debunk. For something in the Bible to turn out to be based on real events with religious overtones added. Religions are always poaching from history, to find some truth to a story in a religious work is not surprising, nor is it a confirmation of the religious aspects of it.

by nn3 5y ago

ehvatum 5y ago

There’s a confounding effect arising from the difficulty in comparing false negative rates between person-meteor-strike and person-lottery-jackpot. Whereas lottery-jackpot events are rarely misinterpreted as some prat dropping rubbish onto person, person-meteor-strike too often is.

withinboredom 5y ago

A lot more people try to win the lottery than jump in front of meteorites.

irrational 5y ago

https://astronomy.com/news/2020/05/death-from-above-7-unlucky-tales-of-people-killed-by-meteorites https://astronomy.com/news/2020/05/death-from-above-7-unluck... Just last year a woman had just gotten out of bed when a meteorite came through her ceiling and hit her pillow where her head had been.

nn3 5y ago
I was actually aware of that story. But she wasn't hit, so it doesn't invalidate my statement.

LorenPechtel 5y ago

They're not lying. It's just meteorite kills are very clumpy. I'm not a lottery player so I can't give a good estimate on the number of lottery winners, but for the major jackpots I'll guess many per year. AFIAK we have no documented meteorite deaths--but it looks like the destruction of Sodom (of biblical fame) was a meteorite. While obviously we have no death toll it's obviously a *lot* of years of major lottery wins. The atmosphere stops most of the stuff but when something's big enough to get through it makes quite a boom. (Chelyabinsk was half a megaton but was high enough up the blast only caused harm by throwing broken windows at people. Tunguska, however was a few megatons and got low enough to be a city-killer. All it blew up was forest for probably zero deaths, but had it fallen 7 hours earlier the world would be a different place because it would have wiped out Leningrad.)

nn3 5y ago
AFAIK the Sodom story was pretty much debunked https://retractionwatch.com/2021/10/01/criticism-engulfs-paper-claiming-an-asteroid-destroyed-biblical-sodom-and-gomorrah/ https://retractionwatch.com/2021/10/01/criticism-engulfs-pap...
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  Interesting! Pretty obviously some sloppy science but I'm not sure that's a debunk. For something in the Bible to turn out to be based on real events with religious overtones added. Religions are always poaching from history, to find some truth to a story in a religious work is not surprising, nor is it a confirmation of the religious aspects of it.