BtZ42 Section 9 (pp 53-60): the sieve of chance

[Mark Kohut]

Roger knows.....the real world probabilities. Roger knows between zero and
one. Roger, unlike Frenesi and so many others, is not
binary-minded.....Roger knows "the excluded middle".

Roger here is Pynchon, that is, Roger here carries (most of) Pynchon's
non-satiric concerns, non-satiric good. Roger
is the baseline of P's 'vision', his vision of life and war.

In this instance, Roger knows the PURE EQUAL CHANCE of a bomb on one's head
for anyone. Pynchon gets to
say Death this way is democratic-- or better, egalitarian. Pynchon gets to
say Death can come at any moment.

No one around him---those statistical idiots, all of us--GET this, not even
Pointsman and not Jessica, of course.

They are not 'safe' in their found safe house. During the war, nowhere is
safe.

I also see in this chapter, Pynchon presenting us with (part of) his vision
of the good life: 'To live in a world where *that [an approaching storm] *would
be the excitement." "only kind thunder"---great line...Where one (or two or
a family lived) in simple dailiness without fear. This little positive
vision appears differently in later books, Vineland and Against the Day
mostly; in the latter in P's vision of small village life in Olde Europe
before the wars as one place.

"Don't you know there's a war on, moron?"





On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 11:15 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> >But once it *has* settled...
> That's the crux, and a starting point for a fascinating (some other time)
> excursus into Bayesian probability. We do much more anthropomorphizing and
> projection than we know, and a some level we'll always feel that the
> roulette ball has a memory and "knows" it should start evening things out
> by settling on red. That feeling grows much faster than the unlikelihood of
> any given run of black does -- which is why more players flocked to make
> ever larger bets on red, and overall the casino did very well that night.
>
> > It would have been the same probability even if the ball at that point
> had settled on black for a few million times in a row, no?
>
> Yes -- aside from the likelihood that you would long since have concluded
> the wheel must be rigged :-)
>
>
> On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 9:32 AM, Thomas Eckhardt <
> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>
>>  Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> P. 56:
>>>
>>> “But squares that have already* had* several hits, I mean—”
>>>
>>> “I’m sorry. That’s the Monte Carlo Fallacy..."
>>>
>>
>> I look at it like this: It is highly unlikely that the roulette ball
>> settles on black for 26 times in a row. But once it *has* settled on black
>> for 26 times in a row, the probability for it to do so again with the next
>> spin of the wheel is the same as before (48.6 per cent, that is).
>>
>> At least that's how I explain it to the kids...
>>
>> Where the bettors went wrong was that 26 spins of a roulette wheel simply
>>> isn't that large a number.
>>>
>>
>> Hmmm. It would have been the same probability even if the ball at that
>> point had settled on black for a few million times in a row, no?
>>
>
>
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