Magic is provably real.

How did you come to that conclusion? I'm genuinely puzzled.

A wounded deer showing up and being the first two people on Earth are independent events. As such, no matter how low the probability of being the first two people on Earth is, it has no impact whatsoever on whether or not a wounded deer will show up. So no, Adam cannot put his feet up rationally expect that a wounded deer will show up - this remains a very unlikely event.
In the setup they aren't independent events though.
 
Well you didn't outright state that in the OP. But even if you did... they are still independent events. Saying "no they're not" doesn't change that.
 
Well you didn't outright state that in the OP.

I in fact did.

But even if you did... they are still independent events. Saying "no they're not" doesn't change that.

They are independent events objectively, but to Adam and Eve's subjective viewpoint they aren't. Even if this worked for them, no outside observer should rationally expect it to.
 
The point is that he's creating a situation where if one event won't happen, the other will.

In the setup they aren't independent events though.

I didn't get it from the OP. Also, I don't see how you can make them not independent unless you adopt some "magical" premises. In other words, it's not that magic is real, it's that the premises are magical.
 
I didn't get it from the OP. Also, I don't see how you can make them not independent unless you adopt some "magical" premises. In other words, it's not that magic is real, it's that the premises are magical.

What's magical about the premises? All that's required is an observer that would expect itself to be in a different position/time period.
 
Why not? I didn't read anything in the OP that states or implies otherwise. Maybe I need to read it again...
I didn't get it from the OP. Also, I don't see how you can make them not independent unless you adopt some "magical" premises. In other words, it's not that magic is real, it's that the premises are magical.
Do you mean that God will kick them out and they will become ancestors of all other humans? I guess you could call that magical in the broadest sense, but that's not the kind of magic the OP seeks to prove.

"A wounded deer shows up at their cave" and "Adam and Eve will have children, be kicked out of Eden and become the progenitors of mankind" are not independent events because they have decided to have children in case no wounded deer shows up at their cave. Unless you call into question their ability to procreate there is nothing magical about following through with such a decision.
 
^Well, if you are asked to show that an identity is true, you may write a 100 pages of loops in the tone of "let a=b" or "if a=b then c=d", it still won't be progress in way of a proof, much like reciting your dream last night won't be an ending answer to the policeman asking you why you decapitated that old beggar two blocks back. It can be a partial account, which is another kind of object, but not distinct. Then again this may be all this thread was about, i can't say cause:

I am not sure what premise the thread has, cause it was never presented fully, yet if this is just about how setting an axiom (in whatever fashion, even the wounded dear meaning) will inevitably make the syllogism less open-ended, yes, that is rather known since ever- it was just used as a basis of Aristotelian logic, itself a closing of a more rigorous yet inherently open-ended way of reasoning known as the dialectic.
 
Nobody is trying to prove an identity here.

It's pretty clear what kind of argument the OP is trying to make, even though it is distractingly clad in biblical narrative. You can read my previous post to see why the probabilistic argument is wrong.
 
Your post still fails to grasp the argument presented in the OP or contribute in any way to the related discussion.
 
I in fact did.

They are independent events objectively, but to Adam and Eve's subjective viewpoint they aren't. Even if this worked for them, no outside observer should rationally expect it to.

You seem to have an incredibly strong, and may I suggest misplaced, faith in the logicality of your argument. Or, at the very least, your clarity of explanation.
 
"A wounded deer shows up at their cave" and "Adam and Eve will have children, be kicked out of Eden and become the progenitors of mankind" are not independent events because they have decided to have children in case no wounded deer shows up at their cave. Unless you call into question their ability to procreate there is nothing magical about following through with such a decision.

Okay, I suppose this is true, but as I see it there are two fundamental problems with the reasoning.

1) The most Adam and Eve can know for sure is that they will get squishy if no wounded dear turns up. They can attempt to have children, but they cannot possibly know for sure that this will be successful, let alone that they will be the progenitor of billions of people. They cannot know this. And if the answer is "ah, but just accept that in this hypothetical situation that they can know this", then the question has already moved outside of the bounds of reality and so any conclusion we reach for this hypothetical question cannot be applied to reality. You basically have to assume magic in order to prove magic.

2) The maths doesn't add up. It's stated that the probability of A (wounded deer walking past) is very low and that the probability of B (making billions of offspring) is even lower than this. Yet it's also stated one or other of the two things must happen, which means that P(A) + P(B) = 1. As P(A) > P(B) then this also means P(A) must be > 0.5 - i.e. is odds-on to occur. This obviously cannot be described as a low probability and, unless Adam and Eve are living in the midst of a swarm of accident-prone deer, we know this isn't a realistic probability to assign to this.

2a) Even if we can accept the assignation (yes, that word again) of the label "low probability" to an odds-on event, we know that in reality P(A) + P(B) =/= 1 at all, so again we would have to accept something about this hypothetical situation that would take the whole thing outside the bounds of reality.

So it's all complete bobbins really.

Edit: oh and...

2b) Even if we can handwave all of that away, and even if we can assume we are dealing with two mutually exclusive and exhaustive events, there's still no guarantee that the event with the higher priority will be the one that happens. Just because the probability of rolling a 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 is significantly higher than the priority of rolling a 6, doesn't mean I definitely won't roll a 6.
 
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More on the front of the lack of clarity (at best) of the op:

-The probability of the myth figures being the first of billions of people is stated as "very low", and moreover as something they deem cannot actually happen. Why can't it? If this is the premise, then isn't the premise of "cannot happen ever" the crucial parameter here, and the one to focus upon in any examination of the op?
-Lack of any clarity in the op makes it bizarre to watch how an original premise of "x cannot happen under any conditions" is argued to be providing or setting up with some insight when "y, non-x" has to happen. Moreover, it is presented as an insight that "magic" occurs, cause "something very highly unlikely will have to be caused to happen due to the original premise". Part of the issue here is purely with lack of clarity re "magic" being non-defined in terms at least in the same context of the premise, but another issue seems to be that as the premise is stated it comes across as a marvel at "if x can never happen due to hypothesis then x does not happen and weird y has to happen". Yes, but in a hypothesis literally anything can happen.Point in a hypothesis is to set up a proof from it, not marvel at the dark figures on the walls on the hypothesized cave.

That is on the logical part of the issue. On the more philosophical one, it should be noted that it is trivial to call this magic, given there is no stable formation of any thought or view or other mental phenomenon known in the actual consciousness of the individual who think it. For all you know, what Mouthwash has in his mind when he thinks of any of the terms in his op is more similar to what Leoreth- acting as usual as if he is Gauss with magical thinking :) - has in mind when he thinks of some random other term or terms. Logic systems inherently don't go beyond the axiomatic basis, and to try to prove some ambiguity inherent in the axioms in the course of examining something in the logic itself is obviously erroneous.

Ie, in the offchance that the non clarified op was about calculating stuff in a personal way and using arbitrary axiomatic beliefs, that again is of no importance in the actual logic system where all parameters have to have distinct connections, ie ambiguity cannot be part of the issue to prove, cause it won't go away once the hypothesis expands.
 
^A start of clarification. What is SSA? It would be nice if we could translate the reasoning into terms not involving the ambiguity of the Adam story. Such terms can be formed by just explaining what SSA/class of observers and tied notions mean.

edit: although, reading a bit of that page, and coming across so inelegantly (or rather hideously) named terms and phrases such as:
-The principal principle
-gedanken
-"Here it looks as if the couple is in one and the same act performing both psychokinesis and backward causation. No mean feat before breakfast."

i am not very inclined to read more from this person :o
 
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Too lazy to read, anyone care to explain if this thought experiment is any better than Schrodinger's cat one?
 
Okay, I suppose this is true, but as I see it there are two fundamental problems with the reasoning.

1) The most Adam and Eve can know for sure is that they will get squishy if no wounded dear turns up. They can attempt to have children, but they cannot possibly know for sure that this will be successful, let alone that they will be the progenitor of billions of people. They cannot know this. And if the answer is "ah, but just accept that in this hypothetical situation that they can know this", then the question has already moved outside of the bounds of reality and so any conclusion we reach for this hypothetical question cannot be applied to reality. You basically have to assume magic in order to prove magic.

That's actually the correct response, but it is not conveyed by saying "the problem assume magic is true." Which is what you did.

2) The maths doesn't add up. It's stated that the probability of A (wounded deer walking past) is very low and that the probability of B (making billions of offspring) is even lower than this. Yet it's also stated one or other of the two things must happen, which means that P(A) + P(B) = 1. As P(A) > P(B) then this also means P(A) must be > 0.5 - i.e. is odds-on to occur. This obviously cannot be described as a low probability and, unless Adam and Eve are living in the midst of a swarm of accident-prone deer, we know this isn't a realistic probability to assign to this.

Deer can get wounded. They can also walk by Adam. It's not a stretch to suggest that one might do both.

2a) Even if we can accept the assignation (yes, that word again) of the label "low probability" to an odds-on event, we know that in reality P(A) + P(B) =/= 1 at all, so again we would have to accept something about this hypothetical situation that would take the whole thing outside the bounds of reality.

I don't understand your argument. Please stop using math if you're trying to explain something.

2b) Even if we can handwave all of that away, and even if we can assume we are dealing with two mutually exclusive and exhaustive events, there's still no guarantee that the event with the higher priority will be the one that happens. Just because the probability of rolling a 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 is significantly higher than the priority of rolling a 6, doesn't mean I definitely won't roll a 6.

When did I say that a deer had to stroll by? The whole thing is about probabilities. Given that you can't comprehend that, I'm going to dismiss the previous argument from you on the grounds this is a very easy to understand point.
 
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