What is a Random Occurence of an Event?
Someone once asked an "expert" on the stock market what the market was going to do. He replied, "Go up and down." Nobody can predict the stock market. If that were possible, then whoever knew how to do that would garner all the stocks in the world and there would be no market. Then how do people get rich on the stock market? It is pure luck. The market is essentially a zero-sum game. If someone wins then someone else loses.
By "pure luck," I mean that the odds of winning are the same as the odds of losing. Not all random events have 50-50 odds. Some events have a high probability of occurring while others have a low probability. For example, having a losing number in the daily lottery, has a high probability, namely 999 chances out of 1000. Having a winning number has a low probability, namely 1 out of 1000. Getting a head when flipping a coin has an even probability, namely 1 out of 2. One of my former students once told me that the odds of winning the lottery is 1 out of 2 because you have two possibilities, either a win or a loss. That is a misunderstanding of the laws of probability.
Probability is based on how much you know. If you are dealt a card from an ordinary bridge deck, the odds of getting a spade is one out of four. However, if the dealer looks at the card before dealing it to you, and he sees a spade, for him the odds of dealing a spade is one. If it is not a spade, the odds for him is zero. Yet if you have not seen the card it is still 1/4 for you.
If the deck is stacked, that is, the dealer put a spade on top, and you are not aware of it, then you would still calculate your odds as 1/4. If you were aware of what he did, then your odds would be one. Again, what you know determines the odds of an event happening.
I began this discussion because someone asked me the following question: What is the nature of “accident”? Does it cause itself, is it caused by something outside itself, or is it causeless? My answer would be that an accident is, first of all, a random occurrence. Having said that, the probability of it occurring might be low, even, or high. It depends on what we know about the things that can cause an accident. For example, automobile accidents are much more likely to occur on crowded highways than on those that are not crowded. Yet an accident can happen in either situation. Because of the nature of the game, it is much more likely to have a serious knee injury when playing football than when playing golf. Again, one can have a knee injury in either game.
Accidents don't occur in a vacuum. Something causes them to occur. It may be pure chance, or it may be because of the environment in which the accident occurs. If we know there was a deliberate attempt to cause it, then we usually don't call it an accident. If we are not aware of the attempt then we do call it an accident. Again, it depends on what we know.
The question about "accidents" arose in the context of a discussion of the origin of human beings. One theory for the origin of mammals and hence man is that it became possible because the dinosaurs disappeared due to the accidental striking of the earth by a piece of a broken asteroid. According to that theory, the collision changed the climate of earth, which in turn brought about the extinction of the dinosaur. The question is: Did God cause that collision or not? We don't know. Hence, we must consider it an accident and not providential. Unless we take the Genisis explanation of creation literally, we cannot prove that God caused that event. Since our knowledge is limited, we call it an accident.
Copyright © Jay D Weaver - May 8, 2010
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