What Are The Chances You Will Read This?, page 4

My Concluding Remarks To This Thread

I've learned a lot from this post, and spent more time on it than I ever thought I would. I want to thank everyone who engaged me in this thread. One thing I've learned a lot about is that you need a pretty good sample size before you make any predictions about stars and flags! This single post has skewed my data substantially. This happens to be four full standard deviations from my normal – it is the most successful thread I've ever started. Cool.

For those who think I was doing this for stars and flags – I could care less about that. Really. I would set my counts back to zero if I could. The "trip meter" has always been much more interesting to me than the "odometer", just a fact for me. Stars and flags are not motivators for me at all. And I wanted to assure you of that, so you will take what I say next with the complete seriousness that I intend.

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Here is the thought I would like to leave you with.

As I said at the start of this thread, the chances of you ending up at a particular point in time and space are ASTRONOMICALLY high, as you look forward into the distant future. But it is pretty easy to predict where you will be just one second from now. Why is there is disparity?

It is because probability and statistics are just ways of making predictions based upon the possibility of outcomes that are TOO COMPLICATED ever to really analyze. It is an alternate technique to understanding things in terms of causes and effect. One second from now, the cause and effects are fairly simple, and it is simple to predict how things will be. One million years from now – the cause and effects are still there, but they are WAY to complicated to know for sure – we can only crudely estimate them, with no assurance.

Using probabilities to predict the future are no different from the probabilities of predicting anything that is unknown. It is just a technique for GUESSING what is and what may be. But this guess is independent of reality. Things are, and will be, as they must be. Reality doesn't care what you think about it. It is real – and your guess is just speculation.

So here is my final thought. It is the final answer I will give you, in response to the question I posed in the title of this thread?

What are the chances you will read this?

I would say that the chances are 100%. Destiny has trapped you – your free will is just an illusion of sorts.

You MUST read this. You have ALWAYS HAD to read this – and now that you have read this, you will NEVER be able to change that. It is clearly illustrated by this innocuous post. But it is also the way of ALL THINGS. It is the nature of the universe.

That is really the secret of this thread. The future is leading us to something that is inevitable. What we think is our free will is nothing but our inability to see the future clearly.

Our future exists; immutable – and unchanging – just like our past.

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I appreciate all the comments you've made. I am now done with this thread completely. Thanks, and good posting!