today's philosophy

[eclectic]

from my desk calendar... paraphrasing David Hume

"David Hume, the skeptical British empricist, said the only rational basis for believing something's a miracle is that all alternative explanations are even more improbable. Since the odds of being deceived are always greater than the odds of a violation of the laws of nature, he could foresee no circumstance in which it would be rational to conclude that a miracle had happened."

[gruber]

ive always thought of a miracle as something that defies statistics. eg someone surviving a disease that has a 99% kill rate

[balans]

Originally Posted by gruber

ive always thought of a miracle as something that defies statistics. eg someone surviving a disease that has a 99% kill rate

To me that is not a miracle, merely one of the remaining 1% of the population represented by the statistic you gave.

Makes me wonder why they survived, rather than give in to belief in superstitions can we instead learn something from their survival to help treat other sufferers of this disease?

[Seamus]

ive always thought of a miracle as something that defies statistics. eg someone surviving a disease that has a 99% kill rate

No.That's called "random chance",like wining a multi millionn dollar lottery, being dealt a royal routine/routiione flush straight up,or rolling 10 sevens in a row.Rare, but it does happen..

A miracle defies the laws of nature. My test is the regrowing of say an amputated limb or a missing eye. I've never seen proof of such things.





Tangent: :LOURDES: Since Bernadette Soubiroux saw the nice lady in 1848, many millions of people have visited the site asking for a miracle. A total of 68 cures have been declared a miracle by the Catholic church. That works out to a fraction of 1%. That figure is far less than the rate spontaneous remission of a rangeof diseases. Imo it proves exactly nothing.

Wiki

Studies

Studies have shown that cases of spontaneous remission that are not reported outnumber those reported by at least 10 to 1[3] and cases related with some disorders have a spontaneous remission rate that appears to be about 1 percent per year.[2]

[edit] Mechanisms

The mechanisms for spontaneous recovery are active in many health disorders[2] and also seem to occur in debilitating and progressive diseases such as cancer and tuberculosis.[1][4] In some disorders the mechanisms of spontaneous remission may be impaired but can be re-established with the proper therapy.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_remission

[eclectic]

Or as Tim Minchin noted, to call something a 'miracle' because there was only, say, (I can't remember the statistic he said) a one-in-a-million chance of the things happening, is to hugely underestimate the number of 'things' there are.

As the others have said, a 1% chance is still a chance. If nobody ever survived, it would have a 100% kill rate. It is simply a misunderstanding of statistics.

aside: gosh i love statistics... i hope i get that job with the abs.

[Jaar-Gilon]

Originally Posted by Seamus

A miracle defies the laws of nature. My test is the regrowing of say an amputated limb or a missing eye. I've never seen proof of such things.

Hey Seamus I still reckon these are possible with modern genetics, after all there are a number of animals that can grow back limbs. Now if someone were able to construct a three sided square....that would indeed be a miracle!!

[davo]

http://www.medicalsearch.com.au/News..._fingers-24396

[Seamus]

Love stats? Hardly. A tool badly misunderstood even by some experts who seem to sometimes forget statistical results are only as reliable as the source.*

OK,I passed a course in 1974. Today I mainly remember stuff about gambling and odds.

I also learned to NEVER play poker with a statistician.

Statics are used by dishonest people such as apologists, politicians and journalists to mislead. One of the more common is the use of the mean instead of the median when talking about say income.


Having said that;actuarial tables used by insurance companies are pretty accurate.



*Some inherent weaknesses of the statsical method first really sunk in when I was studying Emile Durkheim's famous but flawed book "Suide" (suicide)