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

[Mark Kohut]

i forgot to add Jessica's flash vision of herself at thirty, [p. 60 Miller
edition]...that list of a happy settled life's things.
'several children', a garden, a window..voices *Mummy, what's...*cucumbers
and wild onions on a chopping board....

so nice.

On Sat, May 14, 2016 at 5:48 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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