Aliens Quote by Lee Spetner

““Dawkins’s advice shows that he didn’t understand probability. . . . Dawkins said that a creature the lives millions of years would have a different feeling for the meaning of the chance of an event than we have. If the alien lives a hundred million years, he could have played very many hands of bridge Then, Dawkins said, it would not be unusual for him to see a ‘perfect’ bridge hand where each player was dealt thirteen cards of the same suit. ‘They will expect to be dealt a perfect bridge hand from time to time, and will scarcely trouble to write home about it when it happens.’ He’s wrong. One can easily calculate the chance of Dawkins’s alien experiencing a perfect bridge hand at least once in his lifetime. The shance of getting such a hand in one deal is 4.47 x [10 to the minus 28th power]. If the alien plays 100 bridge hands every day of his life for 100 million years, he would play about 3.65 x [10 to the 12th power] hands. The chance of his seeing a perfect hand at least once in his life is then 1.63 x [10 to the minus 15th power], or about one chance in a quadrillion. That’s less than Dawkins’’ chance of coming to New York for two weeks and winning the lottery twice in a row. Would he bother to write home about it?””

— Lee Spetner