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You are basically saying that if the first Powerball number drawn was 01 02 03 04 05 06 that there would be no reason to suspect something wrong with the Powerb
by baggy_trough 1y ago
You are basically saying that if the first Powerball number drawn was 01 02 03 04 05 06 that there would be no reason to suspect something wrong with the Powerball lottery process. It's random! It could happen!
Yes I understand that random trajectories could potentially be anything. But it's notable that this particular random trajectory has an unusual characteristic. It's a characteristic that an alien probe might have. That's what makes it interesting.
- ceejayoz 1y agoYes. People hate this fact, because it feels very counter-intuitive, but 01 02 03 04 05 06 and 04 24 49 60 65 01 are equally likely. You need more than one data point to determine if something screwy is happening. (And, again, the available set of interstellar objects is both very small (n=3) and incredibly biased towards very close ones.)
- baggy_trough 1y agoYour first statement is correct, but your second doesn't follow and is incorrect. If the first numbers that comes out of the Powerball lottery are 01 02 03 04 05 06, then we don't need another one to state that something screwy is very likely to be happening.
- ceejayoz 1y agoYou may feel that way, but it's not true statistically. (Barring other evidence. If Bob from Powerball IT wins that first drawing with those numbers, for example.)
- lateforwork 1y agoIf I saw the numbers "01 02 03 04 05 06" from code that's supposed to spit out random numbers, my first thought won't be "well, statistically that's just as likely as any another 6 numbers". My first thought will be, did someone set random=false?
- ceejayoz 1y agoSure. We also hear a creak at night and think it’s a ghost. Or we rage when our sniper with 99% odds misses in XCOM. Humans are like that. This isn’t even that sort of case. The closest approach is something like 30M kilometers.
- baggy_trough 1y agoWhat sort of case is it then? Isn't your argument that we can't distinguish any "sort of case" at all?
- ceejayoz 1y agoWe need a larger sample size than n=3 and better surveillance of the solar system. What’s weird for in-system objects may be the norm for interstellar ones. Astronomy is a constant barrage of “huh, wtf is that?” without aliens being the explanation.