Robert Anton Wilson's "Prove the Normal" Challenge

[zooterkin]

From that website: He seems to thing that "average", "median" and "normal" all mean the same thing.

Equivocation for the purposes of entertainment (and, to some extent, education). Though I think he's wrong about the average number of vaginas, whichever definition is used.

 

[luchog]

Yes that is precisely the point.

It always surprises me when anyone takes RA Wilson says seriously. G-D knows he certainly didn't. It's pretty much a given that if anything he says sounds in any way spiritually or metaphysically profound, or fundamentally at odds with scientific observation and principle, then you've likely just missed the joke. The only thing "profound" about his work is the way he has of pointing out to us our own absurdity, and challenging us to think about our own preconceptions.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

The concept can be simplified.

A fair coin has heads on one side and tails on the other. With a fair flip, there is 1/2 chance of the top face being heads and 1/2 chance of the top face being tails. So when we flip the coin, we should expect that the top face will be half heads and half tails. Yet every single time we flip the coin, it comes up just heads or just tails. On a single flip, we never, ever get the “normal” half heads and half tails. So you can’t “prove the normal” because it doesn’t exist. The top face will never be the "normal" half heads and half tails.

(You see, he is having a bit of a joke. April fools.)

 

[squealpiggy]

I once found a perfectly normal fnord.

 

[Gazpacho]

It always surprises me when anyone takes RA Wilson says seriously.

What should I not take seriously, the existence of a literal million dollar challenge? All right, I don't. But just what do you think Wilson's point is? Do you think he's making some sort of ironic back-door defense of Randi's assumptions, and that everything he wrote about skepticism in The New Inquisition, and everything he said about it in interviews, is part of the joke? Because that sounds like a real stretch to me.

 

[catsmate]

The concept can be simplified.

A fair coin has heads on one side and tails on the other. With a fair flip, there is 1/2 chance of the top face being heads and 1/2 chance of the top face being tails. So when we flip the coin, we should expect that the top face will be half heads and half tails. Yet every single time we flip the coin, it comes up just heads or just tails. On a single flip, we never, ever get the “normal” half heads and half tails. So you can’t “prove the normal” because it doesn’t exist. The top face will never be the "normal" half heads and half tails.

(You see, he is having a bit of a joke. April fools.)

Actually there is a small chance that the coin will land on its edge so the probabilities of heads and tails are equal, in a fair coin, but very slightly less than 0.5 each.

 

[tsig]

Actually there is a small chance that the coin will land on its edge so the probabilities of heads and tails are equal, in a fair coin, but very slightly less than 0.5 each.

Nope this coin has a rounded edge.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Toss any coin high enough above a viscous mud and it will have a far higher chance of landing and staying vertical than you might think.

 

[tsig]

Toss any coin high enough above a viscous mud and it will have a far higher chance of landing and staying vertical than you might think.

True and if you make it lighter than air it will never come down.