🚀 go-pugleaf

da...@taic.net wrote:

> In soc.culture.jewish Yaakov Menken <men...@torah.org> wrote:
> : Statement from Harold Gans, Mathematician, N.S.A.

                            <snip>

> : 5. The book states that the codes in the Torah can be used to predict
> : future events. This is absolutely unfounded. There is no scientific or
> : mathematical basis for such a statement, and the reasoning used to
> : come to such a conclusion in the book is logically flawed. 
> On the contrary. I suggest that there is a very close relationship
> between finding statistically relevant information and being able to
> predict the future.

So, which horse is going to win at Kempton Park in the 3.15 tomorrow?
Tell me and I'll cut you in!
 
> Say the father of number 20 on the list of sages had had a
> computer and searched for his son's name. And found the name, and the
> city. What is your basis for saying that this is not significant? Or #21? 
> Or #22? Or #23?

There is no way of demonstrating to the credulous or the true believer 
that this or that correlation is not significant. As Russell put it, 
"Every shopgirl complains that it rains on her day off." [Well, he was a 
Victorian. Ed.] When rainmakers fail to make rain, we sack them at the
next election. But if you appoint enough rainmakers of the right calibre 
and insight and with the requisite training, you will in the end make rain. 
It all depends on having a sound selection process, doesn't it?

An odd consequence of our dependence on data is that our gathering of it 
and the conclusions we base upon it are inevitably parochial and dependent 
on our place in time. It is quite possible that the puzzle we inhabit has a 
solution beyond our imagining; yet, down here, we are still stuck with 
innumerable investment decisions. All we can do is do our best, and we 
cannot "unsphere the stars with oaths".

For years, a friend followed the number mysticism of the kabalah. 
Everything had an inner or hidden meaning, yet when they threw him 
off his property, he at once got hold of a really mean lawyer, who 
threw them off it and then threw him back onto it! The "real" world!

Yrs evr,
JohnM
& The Trollenberg Terror