Baloo

Photocrat,

If every one of the 5 billion humans on the planet started guessing, and was allowed one guess per second, statistically, we would still expect to wait for approximately one hundred thousand times the current age of the universe before one of them got one correct answer. Believe me, I did not pick 32 digits without some foresight, and for obvious reasons, I'm not particulary worried if even all 5,000+ II members were to put up a single guess (although I admit it would get quite cumbersome to check them all).

As far as winning the "1 soul" lottery, I would like you to re-read the following from the quoted text: "So, sadly, getting this right will not, on it's own merit, make me into a Christian." Again, this challenge will not win my soul, or convince me God exists. It is merely an event for which the natural explanation is so improbable that I would be willing to wager 5 years of my life, and to the best of my abilities, my cherished freethought and skepticism, that it will not happen.

And, on the plus side, it generally shuts up those theists who assert that as an atheist, I refuse to budge in my worldview, regardless of the evidence presented. In essense, I'm putting my money where my mouth is. I've got 5 years of my life on the line, and if any Christians want me to dedicate those years towards finding their god, they can come and get them.

Baloo

Draygomb... my bad, thought you threw one out there on an earlier post.

HRG

Of course they can (I've done it for logic on this board: it is a semantic consequence of tzhe language we use). It's you who doesn't accept those accounts, using different standards for your explanation than for the atheists' one.

But that's your problem, not theirs.

HRG.

Photocrat

... none of which makes this any more relevant, which was my primary objection ...

*shrug* You still enter a free contest with a reward that [theoretically] would be meaningful to you.

Good. But you have to realize that we've also met dozens of atheists who assert that *nothing* could change their mind. Usually, they appeal to "I'd assume I was hallucinating." I am pleased that you are not among their number.

I already told you a great place to look for those numbers :] It's bound to be somewhere in pi ...

Also, you're forgetting that I know a thing or two about computers :] If you use something like srand(time(0)) [in one language or another :] whatever time you run it will matter, so I could well change the results you'd get by running it by when I told it to you, or even by how long it took you to type it in :] There's a reason these things are called "pseudo-random number generators"

[I am, of course, assuming you don't use some truely random physical process as input; which is not unreasonable since you mentioned it was a 'calculator program' ... probably on a TI, so... :]

So if I knew what sort of set-up you had, we could all start generating the proper numbers for whatever time we thought you might plug it in at & increase our odds significantly :] Given enough information, we probably could reduce our odds to nothing more than those of winning the lottery, which is not as impressive :] Just get me a few thousand fellow Christians & a bit more info on the setup you're using & I could probably find a way to pass this challenge... :]

TerryTryon

Been there, done that. Not as rigorously, but for a lot longer than five years. I did more Bible reading per day than you propose, also more church attendance, more prayer, and more self-abnegation, if averaged. And you don't even intend to tithe! Let me predict that if you did get your magic 32 numbers, you would have a very nasty five years indeed. If I were a monkey's paw demon, I would grant your request just to watch you squirm, and god would be as distant on day 1826 as on day 1!

From living in faith to living in reality has been a very difficult road for me. At this point in time, the non-existence of god is manifest in his impotence.

Nevertheless, at one point in time, I whispered into the ear of the Great Nothingness with faith the true desire of my heart. This was neither a selfish nor presumptuous desire. If he wishes to bring the hundredth sheep back into the fold, he knows what to do.

If anybody has the arrogance to ask me, "What would it take?" I answer, "If there is a god, he knows the contingencies of my faith, and he needs only fulfil the promise made in his word." End of discussion.

Kachana

My divinely inspired guess is: >= 00000000000000000000000000000000 <= 99999999999999999999999999999999

tommyc

I am representing the god of House Music:

12341234123412341234123412341234

Four to the floor, baby

tommyc

Photocrat,

Ahh, but that's irrelevant, because you won't will you? You're not actually going to bother. And you wouldn't want to try it either, in case you got found out and were accused of trying to falsely prove God.

tommyc

oh , and dont worry if my number matches, you'll just have to listen to house music 2 hours a day for the next 5 years, Heaven!

Baloo

Photocrat,

Much of what you say is true. The overall probability of somebody guessing the 32 digit string IS probably somewhat higher than 1x10-32, given the other potential natural explanations. The most likely case seems to be somebody reverse-engineering the number (I am, by the way, using a system-time dependent algorithm, enhanced by a user-supplied seed which I derive from a chaotic system). Thus, a person would need to know WHICH pseudo-random algorithm I'm using, and use it to map a function of all possible system-times at which I could run it crossed with all possible chaotic-system outputs. This would be a very time-intensive, laborous effort, requiring a great deal of mathematical expertise and information-gathering resources. The odds of a person having the time, motivation, expertise, and information-gathering resources, crossed with the odds of him choosing the correct result from the enormous result set he would derive, crossed also with the odds of him doing all of this without raising my own suspicions of foul-play are, to say the least, very slim. In fact, it still seems much more likely that I will "hallucinate", and see a match where there is none; or will blank out momentarily, type in the correct number, and then "return to reality" with a memory of having run the random number generator. The existence of these possibilities, though, is not lost on me (you'll notice I said the "lucky guess" explantion was the "trivial", and not necessarily most likely, natural expanation).

I guess the whole challenge is analogous to a wager. Theists do not get a "free guess". By even acknowledging the challenge, theists give up whatever ground they might have stood on for making the argument that I reject all evidence for God. Furthermore, if their guess is wrong, they give me great ground for the argument that their God either does not exist, is not omniscient, or does not want me to take steps to believe in Him. That is what I gain, if I win. Simple "betting-odds mathematics" basically demonstrate that from my point-of-view, the gain from "winning", multiplied by the overwhelming natural odds of winning, exceeds the "loss" of 5 years of my life.

As a footnote, let me just say that I'm pretty sure it remains an unproven hypothesis that all finite strings of digits exist somewhere within the string of digits in pi. However, even if that were proven, the "correct" 32-digit string in pi would be indistinguishable from any other 32-digit string in pi prior to knowing what the actual string was. So I fail to see the significance of it existing in pi.