GRGR (2) "great bright hand"

[calbert at pop.tiac.net]

> In watching two strands--one about Poisson distributions, etc., one about 
> religion, I wonder whether it has struck anyone else to see 
> affinities--between predestination and statistical thinking.  Some random 
> thoughts:

May I also suggest a connection between Poisson and synchronicity.
If I recall Poisson correctly, it is a function of the combination of 
events which establish "context", to wit, the Poisson formula for 
rocket strikes would combine the probabilities of the perfect 
outcome with those of the intermediate events which will aggregate to 
the outcome of any particular rocket firing (environmental, 
technical, human error factors among others).
It will look something like Outcome= prob(perfection)+prob(bad 
weather)+prob(bad fuel mixture)+prob(technical failure, eg 
stabilizing fin frozen)+prob(shot down by fighter)+prob(sucking 
seagull into ram jet) etc. etc.

Compare this with the occidental concept, as expressed through the I 
Ching, of outcome as dependent, not just on a discreet cause 'a' but 
of the combination of "contexts" which combine to make the event,
eg. I won 2 mill in the lottery because I bought a ticket+sunny 
day+good karma for helping old lady across street+fate jobbing me as 
a fat unhappy teen+IRS found out about 50k summer gig on which I did 
not pay taxes 10 years ago.


> It is axiomatic to statistical thought that "the coin has no memory"; also 
> axiomatic that, if the coin is flipped a thousand times, there will be 
> something close to five hundred heads flipped and five hundred tails.  What 
> is true (or free), then, for the single flip is not true or free in the 
> aggregate:  laws of probability tend not to allow that ten thousand coins 
> will come up heads.  

Careful now. What you say is true, but bear in mind that in the first 
instance you have one event with one of two outcomes. Statisticians
talk about "independence", that the outcome is not a function of 
another event.

Whe you talk about 500 or 10,000 flips you are talking about a series 
of events. Now you have established some dependence. The outcome of a 
single flip remains "independent" of the outcome of any other, but 
when the outcomes are combined for any purpose, you have the question 
"given x  (x>1) number of actions with a finite number of outcomes, 
how will those outcomes split out?"

A bit of probabilistic nitpicking which does nothing to discount the 
following highly relevant observation.

> A similar tension exists in Calvinism between predestination and free 
> will--between the free will allowed the individual and the predestined 
> aggregate actions of mankind.  Each man may or may not be elect or damned.  
> Provided no certainty either way, he experiences the freedom to act--to 
> choose a moral life, to work, hopefully to prosper--or not.  Nevertheless a 
> fixed (God-known) number of souls always come up tails.

But judgement (outcome) is directed at the individual, not the 
aggregate, except in those cases where G-d became sufficiently pissed 
to smote an entire peoples.
> 
> Calvinism grows out of the reformation's concept of grace and its rejection 
> of the Catholic Church's (reducing it somewhat overly here) cause-and-effect 
> theology of good works leading to salvation.  So similar, perhaps, the 
> conflict between statistical Mexico and Pointsman, the consummate cause and 
> effect guy.
> 
> On the other hand--
> 
> In reformation theology, grace is absolute, all or nothing, paradoxical; one 
> is separated from God or not; it is a qualitative state, not quantitative.

Might not this correspond to Pointsman's concern with the 
integers.... 

  
> This as opposed to the Catholic church's quantitative, relativistic 
> notion--good works or their absence leaves one more or less close to grace.  
> Seen this way, Mexico and Pointsman would seem to shift seats somewhat and my 
> little analogy begin to collapse ...

....and Mexico's with the space between them?


> So, on another tangent:  If free will is discounted (it has been asked about 
> Calvinism), isn't God responsible for worldly evil?

Call the Grand Inquisitor @ BrothersK, and get back to us.

> Predestination reveals God's grace at work, in that all are 
> not accepted blindly.  What is given to some must be denied others.  A 
> zero-sum game, then.

Only if you assume that G-d's grace is limited. I'm not sure that 
grace denied is necessarily a function of grace given.

But then, I'm an nth generation heathen.


love,
cfa
wiccasmile, call home