<story><title>Could &apos;Oumuamua be an icy fractal aggregate ejected from a protoplanetary disk?</title><url>https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/no-oumuamua-is-not-an-alien-spaceship-it-might-be-even-weirder</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ALittleLight</author><text>Suppose you know nothing about license plates and I tell you that license plates work one of two ways, either every license plate reads &amp;quot;ARW 357&amp;quot; (it&amp;#x27;s just a meaningless tradition) or every plate has six randomly selected numbers and letters and there&amp;#x27;s equal probability that either explanation is true. THEN you observe a single car with a single license plate with the value &amp;quot;ARW 357&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Does this single observation tell you anything about reality?  I would argue that it does - it should strongly suggest to you that you&amp;#x27;re in the &amp;quot;every car is ARW 357&amp;quot; reality. Similarly, if you draw a ball from an urn and it&amp;#x27;s red, and you know you&amp;#x27;ve drawn either from the &amp;quot;urn of red balls&amp;quot;, or the &amp;quot;urn of one million green balls and one red one&amp;quot; you should be pretty confident you&amp;#x27;ve drawn from the &amp;quot;urn of red balls&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If one theory can explain your observations but the explanation is highly unlikely, and another theory explains your observations and the explanation is likely, the second theory is more likely to be correct all else equal.</text></item><item><author>madrox</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s a quote by Feynman on the topic: “You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!”&lt;p&gt;I believe what you&amp;#x27;re getting at is the Ludic Fallacy, which could probably apply here. That said, whether it&amp;#x27;s a fallacy in the science or in the reporting, it&amp;#x27;s hard to say. I have a degree in statistics, and I&amp;#x27;d say I spent half the time learning stats, and half the time learning to use language precisely to avoid overgeneralizing stats.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a really great TED talk about how even very educated people get it wrong when talking about stats: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ted.com&amp;#x2F;talks&amp;#x2F;peter_donnelly_shows_how_stats_fool_juries?language=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ted.com&amp;#x2F;talks&amp;#x2F;peter_donnelly_shows_how_stats_foo...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>komali2</author><text>&amp;gt; It seems far more likely that objects like &amp;#x27;Oumuamua are relatively rare, and that means it likely came from someplace close by (if it came from farther away, the odds are even lower we&amp;#x27;d ever see one).&lt;p&gt;Ok, it&amp;#x27;s on my list of things to do this year to actually learn how statistics work, but my naive reaction to this supposition, which I read is &amp;quot;the fact that we have encountered Oumuamua means that it&amp;#x27;s likely it didn&amp;#x27;t come from far away, because if it did, it&amp;#x27;s less likely we would have encountered it,&amp;quot; is: We &lt;i&gt;did&lt;/i&gt; encounter it. Just this one, ever. How can we draw any statistical information from that? Either we encountered it, or didn&amp;#x27;t, how does that have any bearing on the statistical probability of seeing it?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>perl4ever</author><text>&amp;quot;Does this single observation tell you anything about reality? I would argue that it does - it should strongly suggest to you that you&amp;#x27;re in the &amp;quot;every car is ARW 357&amp;quot; reality.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I think this scenario is incoherent after thinking about it for a minute. You say &amp;quot;there is equal probability that either explanation is true&amp;quot; but you imply that you, the storyteller, know something about license plates. Probability is a description of incomplete knowledge, so whose knowledge are we talking about, yours or mine?&lt;p&gt;I see no reason (in my hypothetical ignorance) to exclude the possibility you &lt;i&gt;know&lt;/i&gt; I will see &amp;quot;ARW 357&amp;quot; next even if all license plates are different.</text></comment>
<story><title>Could &apos;Oumuamua be an icy fractal aggregate ejected from a protoplanetary disk?</title><url>https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/no-oumuamua-is-not-an-alien-spaceship-it-might-be-even-weirder</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ALittleLight</author><text>Suppose you know nothing about license plates and I tell you that license plates work one of two ways, either every license plate reads &amp;quot;ARW 357&amp;quot; (it&amp;#x27;s just a meaningless tradition) or every plate has six randomly selected numbers and letters and there&amp;#x27;s equal probability that either explanation is true. THEN you observe a single car with a single license plate with the value &amp;quot;ARW 357&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Does this single observation tell you anything about reality?  I would argue that it does - it should strongly suggest to you that you&amp;#x27;re in the &amp;quot;every car is ARW 357&amp;quot; reality. Similarly, if you draw a ball from an urn and it&amp;#x27;s red, and you know you&amp;#x27;ve drawn either from the &amp;quot;urn of red balls&amp;quot;, or the &amp;quot;urn of one million green balls and one red one&amp;quot; you should be pretty confident you&amp;#x27;ve drawn from the &amp;quot;urn of red balls&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If one theory can explain your observations but the explanation is highly unlikely, and another theory explains your observations and the explanation is likely, the second theory is more likely to be correct all else equal.</text></item><item><author>madrox</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s a quote by Feynman on the topic: “You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!”&lt;p&gt;I believe what you&amp;#x27;re getting at is the Ludic Fallacy, which could probably apply here. That said, whether it&amp;#x27;s a fallacy in the science or in the reporting, it&amp;#x27;s hard to say. I have a degree in statistics, and I&amp;#x27;d say I spent half the time learning stats, and half the time learning to use language precisely to avoid overgeneralizing stats.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a really great TED talk about how even very educated people get it wrong when talking about stats: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ted.com&amp;#x2F;talks&amp;#x2F;peter_donnelly_shows_how_stats_fool_juries?language=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ted.com&amp;#x2F;talks&amp;#x2F;peter_donnelly_shows_how_stats_foo...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>komali2</author><text>&amp;gt; It seems far more likely that objects like &amp;#x27;Oumuamua are relatively rare, and that means it likely came from someplace close by (if it came from farther away, the odds are even lower we&amp;#x27;d ever see one).&lt;p&gt;Ok, it&amp;#x27;s on my list of things to do this year to actually learn how statistics work, but my naive reaction to this supposition, which I read is &amp;quot;the fact that we have encountered Oumuamua means that it&amp;#x27;s likely it didn&amp;#x27;t come from far away, because if it did, it&amp;#x27;s less likely we would have encountered it,&amp;quot; is: We &lt;i&gt;did&lt;/i&gt; encounter it. Just this one, ever. How can we draw any statistical information from that? Either we encountered it, or didn&amp;#x27;t, how does that have any bearing on the statistical probability of seeing it?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>komali2</author><text>Ok, this explanation makes a lot of sense.&lt;p&gt;However, are we able to reduce down our understanding of &amp;quot;which universe we&amp;#x27;re in&amp;quot; in such simple terms? I think I&amp;#x27;d understand better if I knew how long we&amp;#x27;ve been capable of detecting oumuamuas.</text></comment>