Speaker 1: Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Here thousands of
Speaker 1: hours of Dennis's lectures, courses in classic radio programs, and
Speaker 1: to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to Dennisprager dot com.
Speaker 1: On today's episode of Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2: There is one question I will tell you now that
Speaker 2: is not answerable. That is simply a matter of faith.
Speaker 2: And I respect both positions equally as it happens, and
Speaker 2: that is God directs everything or God allows randomness to
Speaker 2: take place. I respect both positions equally, and I am
Speaker 2: comfortable with both and uncomfortable with both.
Speaker 1: That's coming off on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
Speaker 2: It starts right now, to be or not to be?
Speaker 2: That is the question God.
Speaker 3: Isn't God supposed to be good?
Speaker 2: This needs supposed to love us?
Speaker 4: Does God want us to suffer ten years?
Speaker 2: You're not finished yet? Why did you go there? Who
Speaker 2: are you? Bruce? I am God? Bingo Yazi?
Speaker 3: Is that your final answer?
Speaker 2: Our service has God bing ding ding ding ding ding
Speaker 2: ding ding.
Speaker 3: Well, it was nice to meet you.
Speaker 1: God.
Speaker 3: Thank you for the Grand Canyon and good luck with
Speaker 3: the apocalypse.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Dennis Prager Show, and this is
Speaker 2: the Ultimate Issues hour. We talk about some great issue
Speaker 2: of life. The great issue of life this hour is randomness,
Speaker 2: luck and everything related to that, and it is it is.
Speaker 2: There is one question I will tell you now that
Speaker 2: is not answer. That is simply a matter of faith.
Speaker 2: And I respect both positions equally as it happens. And
Speaker 2: I'm talking about, obviously in this arena, those who do
Speaker 2: believe in God, and that is God directs everything or
Speaker 2: God allows randomness to take place. I respect both positions equally,
Speaker 2: and I am comfortable with both and uncomfortable with both.
Speaker 2: So just just know that that's one issue. It's an
Speaker 2: issue that we may discuss later on in the hour,
Speaker 2: But right now, I have a professor at cal Tech, California.
Speaker 2: What is the actual California Instute of Technology. You see,
Speaker 2: it's so funny you say cal Tech so much and
Speaker 2: you forget it. It actually stands. It's probably that an MIT.
Speaker 2: They are the most distinguished technology or technological universities in
Speaker 2: the United States, if not the world. One on the
Speaker 2: East coast, one on the West coast. He's a professor
Speaker 2: who has his PhD in physics from Berkeley. Leonard Laudenell
Speaker 2: and he is he teaches randomness. He teaches about randomness
Speaker 2: to future scientists at cal Tech. This book was on
Speaker 2: the New York Times bestseller list and is now number
Speaker 2: four on the Business best Sellers. Which is interesting that
Speaker 2: it would be a business bestseller. I think doctor Mlauddenew
Speaker 2: I must say we have him in studio and the
Speaker 2: book is titled The Drunkards Walk, How Randomness Rules our
Speaker 2: lives and Dr Laddinew pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 3: The Dennis Prager Show. Great to be here.
Speaker 2: Now let me first deal with some definitions and then
Speaker 2: we'll talk about the philosophy of all this, because we
Speaker 2: use these terms all the time. And then when I
Speaker 2: was looking through your book, I realized, by golly, I
Speaker 2: really don't know exactly what or I thought I knew
Speaker 2: exactly what I meant. If I'm told Dennis daily exercise
Speaker 2: will reduce the risk of a cardio incident by twenty
Speaker 2: six percent.
Speaker 3: Right right?
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
Speaker 4: Well, that means that if you look at a large
Speaker 4: number of people who are in your situation, and you
Speaker 4: look at two groups, one of them who do the
Speaker 4: exercise and one of them who don't. Then the people
Speaker 4: who do the exercise have been found to have that
Speaker 4: much many fewer heart attacks.
Speaker 2: Okay, so fine, then, so compared to those who don't
Speaker 2: do it. Okay, that's what I thought it meant. But
Speaker 2: looking through your book, you said, sometimes it's not quite
Speaker 2: as clear as we think it is, these statements of
Speaker 2: percentage less likely or more likely.
Speaker 3: Well, that's true. You have to look at the studies.
Speaker 4: If it's a medical study, one would hope that they
Speaker 4: did a good study and that there were enough people
Speaker 4: in the study, because when you say twenty six percent us,
Speaker 4: it means that you sample to a certain numbers.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're right, you're right. Then I'll tell you where
Speaker 2: you raised it that I'd love you to deal with. Okay,
Speaker 2: what are the odds against my taking two dice? And
Speaker 2: because you deal with this and rolling a snake eyes
Speaker 2: twice in a row, that is a two ones.
Speaker 4: Well, the odds of rolling one one is one and
Speaker 4: six and the odds of rolling another one is also
Speaker 4: one in six. So the odds of rolling two in
Speaker 4: a row are one in thirty six. And the way
Speaker 4: you could look at that is there are thirty six
Speaker 4: possible combinations when you roll to die two dice, and
Speaker 4: they're all equally probable, given that the dice are fair.
Speaker 3: If the dice are fair, and.
Speaker 4: If you want to talk philosophically, that could be an
Speaker 4: assumption that we might want to question. But if you
Speaker 4: assume that the dice are fair, there are thirty six
Speaker 4: different possibilities, each equally probable, and one only one of
Speaker 4: them is two ones.
Speaker 2: Right. Okay, fine, but you point out, I believe it's
Speaker 2: probably not going to happen if I roll thirty six.
Speaker 4: Times, right, Well, that's the deeper question. Well, there's two
Speaker 4: questions there. Okay, If you if you roll it a
Speaker 4: small number of times, the chances are that that that
Speaker 4: the results that you achieve are not going to reflect
Speaker 4: the actual underlying probabilities. And that is a big issue.
Speaker 4: That a big issue in interpreting life and the world
Speaker 4: around us, not just in throwing dice. Take a simpler example,
Speaker 4: for instance, suppose that you have a sixty percent chance
Speaker 4: of success in some venture, that a company has sixty
Speaker 4: percent chance of success, or you have a sixty percent
Speaker 4: chance of success.
Speaker 3: However you define that and.
Speaker 4: Suppose that you take five shots at it, you would
Speaker 4: think if your results were to reflect the underlying probabilities
Speaker 4: precisely that you would get three out of five successes,
Speaker 4: because that that's sixty percent of five. But in reality,
Speaker 4: when you do the math, you find out that the
Speaker 4: chances are only one out of three that you'll have
Speaker 4: that you'll have.
Speaker 3: Sixty percent or three out of five successes.
Speaker 4: If your underlying probability is sixty per the chances are
Speaker 4: two thirds that your results in five tries will not
Speaker 4: reflect that. And there's a one in ten chance, in fact,
Speaker 4: that one inten chance that you have five success or
Speaker 4: five failures in a row.
Speaker 2: So why would we even say it's a sixty percent chance.
Speaker 4: Well, it's meaningful if you have a larger number of
Speaker 4: success of ries like the dice. Like the dice you
Speaker 4: have to have. See, there's something in mathematics called the
Speaker 4: law of large numbers, which says that if you do
Speaker 4: it enough, and the chances are very great that your
Speaker 4: results will reflect the underlying probabilities. One mistake that people
Speaker 4: make is what psychologists call the law of small numbers,
Speaker 4: which is not a law at all, So it's kind
Speaker 4: of a bad term, but it's a harcastic term, and
Speaker 4: what it means is they apply the law of.
Speaker 3: Large numbers to small numbers, and they can't be you
Speaker 3: can't be.
Speaker 4: So if you look at the Fortune five hundred, if
Speaker 4: every company was equal, and every company had a sixty
Speaker 4: percent chance of success in a given year, and you
Speaker 4: look at the track records over five years, you would
Speaker 4: find fifty companies with either five straight good or bad years,
Speaker 4: even though everyone had identical sixty percent chance of success.
Speaker 4: Will need to understand that in that real we don't
Speaker 4: often have samples of hundreds where we can write exactly that.
Speaker 2: And let me explain this in layman's terms, and tell
Speaker 2: me if I'm right, And that is those of you
Speaker 2: who have played blackjack at a casino, say in Vegas,
Speaker 2: and there there are rules in blackjack that are based
Speaker 2: on numbers. In other words, if the if the the
Speaker 2: dealer is showing a ten or a picture card, same thing,
Speaker 2: and you have a five, you should you should think
Speaker 2: what are you supposed to get hit? Exactly, But if
Speaker 2: they're showing a five or a runder and you're showing something,
Speaker 2: you shouldn't take a hit away. But still people will
Speaker 2: draw on a fifteen when they shouldn't, and they'll get
Speaker 2: a six, and they're they're terrific twenty one because it
Speaker 2: interesting well, and the reason is because it's small numbers,
Speaker 2: which then the casino tries to undo by having six decks.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, they try, so you can't count, So you
Speaker 4: can't count, So you can't count because the odds change
Speaker 4: as cars are revealed.
Speaker 2: Exactly. So at what point when we say, you said,
Speaker 2: back to the dice, it's a one in thirty six
Speaker 2: chance that I will do two ones in a row? Correct?
Speaker 2: Is that what you said? Okay? Now, at what point
Speaker 2: is that iron clad in the billions? How many roles
Speaker 2: will make that an iron clad fact? Or is there
Speaker 2: never such a thing?
Speaker 4: Oh, there's never such Well what do you mean by
Speaker 4: iron clad facts? In other words, that you will throw
Speaker 4: that that that that you have exactly went out of six?
Speaker 3: Yes, so that's correct.
Speaker 2: Never an iron clad fact, never, no matter how big
Speaker 2: the number.
Speaker 3: That's right. So what it becomes the chance? The chance.
Speaker 3: Here's the way the law works.
Speaker 4: If you tell me how if you say that that
Speaker 4: the probability is one in thirty six, yeah, then the
Speaker 4: law works this way. You tell me what your error
Speaker 4: allowed air is away.
Speaker 3: From one in thirty six? Is it one in thirty six?
Speaker 4: Point one or one in thirty six point oh one
Speaker 4: or okay plus or minus point oh one?
Speaker 2: Okay, what is that?
Speaker 4: Then I can and then I can tell you, and
Speaker 4: you have to also tell me how certain you want
Speaker 4: to be that you're going to get within that era
Speaker 4: of one.
Speaker 2: Right, I'll even make it broader thirty five, thirty six
Speaker 2: or thirty seven.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I would have to do a calculation, which
Speaker 4: I think Boorre your your listener, It.
Speaker 2: Would, it would. But but is there if you think
Speaker 2: about the.
Speaker 4: Coin tosses, for instance, it's you need hundreds or a thousand,
Speaker 4: depending on how much margin of error you want and
Speaker 4: how probable you want to be of getting within that
Speaker 4: margin of error. So in the in the in the
Speaker 4: in the in the coin toss example, I gave you
Speaker 4: with sixty percent, depending on whether you want to have,
Speaker 4: let's say, ninety five percent certainty that you're within three
Speaker 4: percent of sixty percent, or do you want ninety nine
Speaker 4: percent certainty that you're within one percent of.
Speaker 3: You know the way these things.
Speaker 4: But in general, in that example, you would probably want
Speaker 4: hundreds at least exactly.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 4: So, and in life we don't normally give for somebody
Speaker 4: else one hundred years right.
Speaker 3: What about game?
Speaker 2: I'm doing a coin toss with you. I just got
Speaker 2: three tails in a row. Is there anything in the
Speaker 2: universe that would make it less likely that the fourth
Speaker 2: one is a tail? Answer?
Speaker 3: Let me come back.
Speaker 2: We got to take a break, and then I want
Speaker 2: to ask the big stuff. How does this play out
Speaker 2: in our lives? Drunk drivers, cancer, et cetera. The book
Speaker 2: is The Drunkard's Walk. Professor Leonard Bladenow. This is the
Speaker 2: Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
Speaker 1: This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2: Prager. It is the Ultimate Issues Hour. The subject is
Speaker 2: the randomness of life, probability, randomness, luck. But first we're
Speaker 2: establishing our parameters about what it even means. What does
Speaker 2: it mean that there's a fifty percent chance? What do
Speaker 2: we even understand that sort of stuff? And there's a
Speaker 2: best selling book out on that called The Drunkard's Walk,
Speaker 2: How Randomness Rules Our Lives? Leonard Mladenow or Maladenow mL
Speaker 2: od that's the Malod I now in l He is
Speaker 2: a He teaches at cal Tech California Institute of technology
Speaker 2: and has a PhD in physics. Okay, doctor Maladden, Now
Speaker 2: let's do a real life a situation. Then go to
Speaker 2: the great some of the great philosophic questions, because you
Speaker 2: have some stories there from your parents' lives which are riveting.
Speaker 2: But let's talk about sports for a moment. In a
Speaker 2: world series, the winner is the team that wins four
Speaker 2: games first, four out of seven. It's called obviously. It
Speaker 2: is said though, among baseball, basketball, hockey, football connoisseurs, that
Speaker 2: the winner is not necessarily the best team because pretty
Speaker 2: much any team can beat any pro team can beat
Speaker 2: any other pro team on any given day. That's what
Speaker 2: they always say. So does do your statistics of randomness
Speaker 2: and probability support that statement that in a four out
Speaker 2: of seven series the best team doesn't have all that
Speaker 2: much more likelihood? You have to play a lot more
Speaker 2: than seven games for it to play out.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 4: Well, first we have to recognize that in sports is
Speaker 4: a good orient to test these ideas because it's controlled,
Speaker 4: there are set rules, and the statistics are publicly available.
Speaker 4: But in sports there are many random factors depending on
Speaker 4: the sport. But if there weren't random factors, and any
Speaker 4: time one team teamMy play team B. You'd have the
Speaker 4: same result. Teammate would win every time, but they don't
Speaker 4: because there are random factors, which can be anything from
Speaker 4: someone not feeling well to the wind blowing the wrong
Speaker 4: way or different things. But you let's say that we
Speaker 4: took a team, and let's take baseball, and that team
Speaker 4: A had A was better than team B. Let's say
Speaker 4: their their theoretical advantage was fifty five percent to forty
Speaker 4: five so if they played a zillion games, they would
Speaker 4: tend to win fifty five percent of them. Now they
Speaker 4: play a seven game series and best of seven wins, Well,
Speaker 4: if you do the calculation, then you'll find that the
Speaker 4: chances are about forty percent that the lesser team in
Speaker 4: that case will win the seventh best of seven series.
Speaker 2: So even in seven games, game.
Speaker 3: Is almost a toss up.
Speaker 2: And oh wait, oh, you consider forty percent toss up.
Speaker 4: Well, it's forty versus sixty, so the superior team will
Speaker 4: win more often. But certainly I wouldn't bet my life
Speaker 4: on even car of.
Speaker 2: Course, but wait, if they played one thousand games.
Speaker 4: Well, so here's the question is and that we were
Speaker 4: talking before about when you can use a law of
Speaker 4: large numbers. Let's say you wanted to lower the percentage
Speaker 4: in this case of the lower of the lesser team
Speaker 4: winning with the four or seven series winning the best
Speaker 4: of something series, how many games do you have to play?
Speaker 4: If you're willing to accept a twenty five percent chance
Speaker 4: of the lesser team winning, then you have to play
Speaker 4: the best of forty game series. Oh and if you
Speaker 4: want to have what they call statistical significance, there's only
Speaker 4: a five percent chance the lesser team will win. In
Speaker 4: this case, you'd have to play a two hundred and
Speaker 4: sixty nine games.
Speaker 2: It does support the theory that seven games is an
Speaker 2: advantage for the worst team.
Speaker 4: Seven games gives them a shot, right, yes, it might
Speaker 4: allow better shot. As in most of life, as I
Speaker 4: keep saying, you don't really play, you have enough opportunities
Speaker 4: to really see what's going on. You know, it's almost
Speaker 4: two baseball seasons or one and a half or several
Speaker 4: basketball seasons to really see what's going on. Of course,
Speaker 4: different games are different backs you might want to factor
Speaker 4: in home court advantagees were cimplified.
Speaker 2: Wait, I want to remember that. That is fascinating A Okay,
Speaker 2: I get it, I really do get it. Two hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty nine games would have to be played in
Speaker 2: order to ensure that you got what should be the
Speaker 2: chances of the worst team winning.
Speaker 4: Well, if one team is better than the other by
Speaker 4: fifty five to forty five, I get you where there
Speaker 4: usually are pretty close.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: But if you want to minimize, if you want to
Speaker 4: have the chances being only one out of twenty or
Speaker 4: five percent that the lesser team will win, you have
Speaker 4: to play two.
Speaker 2: I understand the sixty nine right right, I understand now.
Speaker 2: To make it clear to folks out there, if the
Speaker 2: team is much better than another team, let's say the
Speaker 2: first place team and the last place team played a
Speaker 2: World Series, you wouldn't need two hundred less.
Speaker 3: That's it. You have to do.
Speaker 2: The calcultation ends on what the so that's so. So
Speaker 2: there are a lot of a lot of factors, all right. Now,
Speaker 2: Obviously we try to apply this to our lives. Where
Speaker 2: where does this apply? In other words, if somebody, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: and it makes me very angry to even say this,
Speaker 2: will be hit by a drunk driver today on some
Speaker 2: highway in America, that you view that as utterly random from.
Speaker 4: The point of view of the person who was hit. Yes,
Speaker 4: it is, I would viewed as a random event in
Speaker 4: the sense that it's unpredictable, and all you can say
Speaker 4: when you leave the house is what your probabilities are
Speaker 4: of getting hit. There's no deterministic factor unless you're the
Speaker 4: one drinking.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, exactly now, The only the only balance in
Speaker 2: view would be that there was a divine will that
Speaker 2: you be hit that day, right, I mean there was,
Speaker 2: There is no other There's no third possibility. There's divine
Speaker 2: will that you be hit there, or there is randomness
Speaker 2: now and now the problem is that a lot of
Speaker 2: religious people feel that God and randomness can coexist. I
Speaker 2: don't happen to agree with that, but I, as I
Speaker 2: said earlier, I respect that view, but I don't happen
Speaker 2: to agree with that. I think that God made a
Speaker 2: world where you can be hit by a drunk driver,
Speaker 2: and God didn't will it now? And I know you're
Speaker 2: not theologically that's not your area. But but is that
Speaker 2: a fair statement? There is no other possibility?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: Either was what the other possibility would be that you
Speaker 4: that you have some control over the situation or the
Speaker 4: other the drunk which I don't feel that you do yeah.
Speaker 2: A lot of people like to believe that positive thinking
Speaker 2: will make sure that no, exactly.
Speaker 4: And it's an interesting illustration because what it shows is
Speaker 4: that very small see, our lives are guided not just
Speaker 4: by our abilities and our efforts, but also by random
Speaker 4: factors that happen. And it's those factors and our reactions
Speaker 4: to them that govern a lot of our lives. And
Speaker 4: in this case, this is an example where a very
Speaker 4: small random factor like having an extra cup of coffee
Speaker 4: could save your life and you'd never know it, because
Speaker 4: you will not know that you would have been hit
Speaker 4: had you left a minute earlier. Yes, of course, and
Speaker 4: sometimes something happens.
Speaker 2: But you yeah, or you could have the same cup
Speaker 2: of coffee and it causes.
Speaker 3: You cause me to be hit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And and and when you look back at your lives,
Speaker 4: there are many areas where you can identify relatively well
Speaker 4: completely unrelated events that changed your life completely. I mean,
Speaker 4: in my life that's happened. But in the book, I
Speaker 4: tend to focus more on people that are more interesting
Speaker 4: than I. And for instance, Bruce Willis is one example
Speaker 4: I give. And he was a struggling actor, not a
Speaker 4: complete unknown, so people had looked at him just no
Speaker 4: one picked him out and said you're the man.
Speaker 3: He was in New York tending.
Speaker 4: Bar on and off, being an off Broadway plays and whatnot.
Speaker 4: And then one one summer he decided to, depending on
Speaker 4: which story you believe, to visit his girlfriend in Los Angeles,
Speaker 4: or if you believe another version, to go see the
Speaker 4: eighty four Olympics. And he came out to Los Angeles
Speaker 4: and an agent recommended that he go and try out
Speaker 4: for this TV show that they were casting. And the
Speaker 4: TV show already had a favorite. But he showed up
Speaker 4: there and of the three decision makers, two out of
Speaker 4: three didn't like him, and the other one did.
Speaker 2: All right, you'll tell us the rest when we come back.
Speaker 3: We'll take your calls. We got a full board already.
Speaker 2: One eight Prager seven seven six.
Speaker 1: This episode of Timeless Wisdom continue right after this. Now
Speaker 1: back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2: The subject of this Ultimate Issues hour is randomness. How
Speaker 2: randomness rules our lives? Is the book which is titled
Speaker 2: The Drunkard's Walk by Leonard Mladenow, and it's up at
Speaker 2: Praguer Radio dot com. At the blog he teaches exactly
Speaker 2: this subject. Doctor Vladenell at Caltech, and you were telling
Speaker 2: the story about Bruce Willis, who coincidentally turned out to
Speaker 2: come out to Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: Where he had no.
Speaker 2: Career at the time in acting, and somebody suggested the audition.
Speaker 2: Two out of the three judges of the audition were
Speaker 2: not in favor of him.
Speaker 4: Go on, well, I should say he had some career,
Speaker 4: but not a hugely successful Okay, he was still bar
Speaker 4: attending bar in New York. And well, two out of
Speaker 4: three did not recognize that he would be a great star.
Speaker 4: The other one ended up convincing the other two and
Speaker 4: they did hire him. And then the show went on
Speaker 4: the air and was not a great success actually, and
Speaker 4: it went on mid season. It's called Moonlighting that people
Speaker 4: may remember. And in the second season it just took
Speaker 4: off and made him a big star. And then the
Speaker 4: Diehard series came in and the rest is history. But
Speaker 4: the point of that story is two points. One is
Speaker 4: that despite all our planning and all our efforts and
Speaker 4: trying very hard to maximize our success, quite often it's
Speaker 4: really random events that have a huge effect on us.
Speaker 4: And the other thing is that even though events always
Speaker 4: look clear in hindsight, and if you look at Bruce Willis,
Speaker 4: now you'll say star, charisma, genius, whatever. He's had a
Speaker 4: huge career that's only clear in hindsight, and it wasn't
Speaker 4: clear before had plenty of people had seen him, and
Speaker 4: no one had said, this man is a certain star,
Speaker 4: this man has all this career when we have to
Speaker 4: hire him. And to take it away from that, I
Speaker 4: talk about in the Drunkards walk about Pearl Harbor nine
Speaker 4: to eleven other examples where people have looked in hindsight
Speaker 4: and saw that things looked very clear, and that you
Speaker 4: could trace a series of events and say one event
Speaker 4: A cluse, B, colass c. And therefore we should have known.
Speaker 4: But the point is that there are often many different
Speaker 4: options that could have happened between A and B, or
Speaker 4: between B and C. And when you're back at A
Speaker 4: and your face with this tree of a million options,
Speaker 4: it's not all that clear which one is going to happen.
Speaker 4: It's only clear after it happens and you trace it backwards.
Speaker 4: So that's that's another importsison.
Speaker 2: So in governing your own life based on your expertise
Speaker 2: in random statistics, et cetera, in governing your own life,
Speaker 2: because I could say, it governs a lot of my thinking.
Speaker 2: For example, I wear a seat belt every time I drive.
Speaker 2: I've read the data, and they strike me is so
Speaker 2: persuasive that in case of an accident, injury or death,
Speaker 2: so much lesson.
Speaker 3: Right. It's a good example.
Speaker 4: But you can also find people who tell you that
Speaker 4: they only live through their accent because of some they
Speaker 4: did not wear.
Speaker 3: That is right, right.
Speaker 2: I always use that as an example of how a
Speaker 2: generalization is true even though they were.
Speaker 4: And that's what happens when there's probability is involved. So
Speaker 4: what you're doing when you're putting on the seatbelt is
Speaker 4: increasing your probability of surviving an accident, right, Maybe a
Speaker 4: case where.
Speaker 2: Where it will guarantee my death.
Speaker 4: Yes, And in life I'm not saying it's very important
Speaker 4: for me to say that. I'm not saying that ability
Speaker 4: doesn't matter and that effort doesn't matter. What I'm saying
Speaker 4: is there's also another component, of course, if you have
Speaker 4: a bunch of failures. For instance, if you're JK. Rowling
Speaker 4: and your your book is rejected nine times, don't give
Speaker 4: up her book first. Harry Potter was rejected nine times.
Speaker 4: John Grisham's A Time to kill was rejected over twenty times.
Speaker 4: There is a million stars. I have the diar of
Speaker 4: Anne Frank. The manuscript was sent to a New York
Speaker 4: publisher for translation before it as can't come out, and
Speaker 4: it was rejected and it was described as a petty
Speaker 4: another petty example of teenage family. Yea, all these things
Speaker 4: can happen. It doesn't mean that they're true. It doesn't
Speaker 4: mean you should take it to heart. One of the
Speaker 4: lessons of the book is to get many at bats,
Speaker 4: many opportunities, because your chances are almost never one percent
Speaker 4: of success, and it may be small at the endeavor
Speaker 4: you're trying, but if you keep trying, the chances are
Speaker 4: very great that something will happen for you. And if
Speaker 4: you're a great success, if you're on the bestseller list,
Speaker 4: which I'm happy to be, you have to recognize that
Speaker 4: a lot of that was luck.
Speaker 3: Well. You shouldn't get arrogant about it.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's it's it's humbling. It's humbling, listen. I
Speaker 2: have talked about this with regard to marriage. I was
Speaker 2: just with a couple married forty nine years. They married
Speaker 2: after four four days fifty years ago. What they mad
Speaker 2: and I said, so it's obvious. I said, the secret
Speaker 2: to your great marriage's luck. They said entirely, entirely, and
Speaker 2: that is that is very very people should work on
Speaker 2: their marriages, obviously, but the luck in every area of life.
Speaker 2: We're going to take your calls when we come back.
Speaker 2: Then he has a you have very very powerful story
Speaker 2: about your parents. I want you to tell one eighth
Speaker 2: Prager seven seven six, Hi, everybody, the ultimate issues our
Speaker 2: Dennis Prager here and I am with doctor Leonard Mludnow.
Speaker 2: He is teaches a cal Tech teaches randomness. His book
Speaker 2: is exactly about that. It's called The Drunkard's Walk. How
Speaker 2: randomness rules are alives? And I happen to agree with
Speaker 2: just about everything here. And I think the rational person
Speaker 2: maximizes odds as much as possible. That's why I wear
Speaker 2: a seat belt, even though I acknowledged that there would
Speaker 2: be occasions in a crash where in fact, wearing a
Speaker 2: seat belt would be bad. But in the vast majary
Speaker 2: of cases, it's a good thing. You maximize your odds.
Speaker 2: That that's that's what we do. But but it but
Speaker 2: it doesn't dictate what will happen to you. The odds
Speaker 2: don't dictate anything. They are just what they are, and
Speaker 2: we try we try to live accordingly. And let's go
Speaker 2: to some of your calls. One eight Prager seven seven
Speaker 2: six in Conroe, Texas. It's Kenneth. Hi, Kenneth Urn with
Speaker 2: Dennis Prager and doctor Malaudenelle.
Speaker 5: Hi. Guys, good evening.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 5: I have a challenge for the doctor. In my theory,
Speaker 5: randomness is actually a misunderstanding or lack of understanding of
Speaker 5: the events that are occurring. For instance, in his dice
Speaker 5: throwing analogy, if we knew the force and the angle
Speaker 5: which was they were being thrown, the spin on the dice,
Speaker 5: and the surface on which they were landing, we could
Speaker 5: guarantee every time that we would know without some of
Speaker 5: the dice. Is it not correct?
Speaker 3: You're absolutely correct?
Speaker 2: In fact, wait wait, that's that's very good, Very good, Kenneth.
Speaker 2: So you're you're saying, and then of course we're going
Speaker 2: to have your response. So I just want to understand
Speaker 2: your saying there it's contextual in every instance.
Speaker 3: No, it's not.
Speaker 2: That's what he's saying. I'm saying what he's saying, Kenneth,
Speaker 2: that there's never.
Speaker 3: Kenneth, do you know about quantum mechanics.
Speaker 5: Well, I know that there's a great lack of understanding
Speaker 5: about the way quantum mechanics works.
Speaker 4: Yes, sir, Actually I would say that there is a
Speaker 4: pretty good understanding of it.
Speaker 3: But we don't need to get into physics here.
Speaker 4: But I I do talk in the book a little
Speaker 4: bit about a discussion I had with a fellow who
Speaker 4: was very religious who had a hard time accepting that there.
Speaker 3: Was any randomness in the world.
Speaker 4: And right, and and what Kenneth is saying is absolutely true,
Speaker 4: that it is contextual. And I was going to say
Speaker 4: that there was some people built a machine for inst
Speaker 4: that could flip a coin.
Speaker 3: And gets the same heads or tails every time.
Speaker 4: So when we say that they did they build such Yeah,
Speaker 4: I actually I have a friend who claims that he
Speaker 4: knows someone who can actually do that with his thumb.
Speaker 4: So when we say something is random, what we mean
Speaker 4: is is that we can only describe the possible results
Speaker 4: using probabilities and not and not exactly determine with them.
Speaker 4: And that depends on our knowledge. Okay, so if you
Speaker 4: did have completely controlled conditions, you can take something that
Speaker 4: is random. When you don't have controlled conditions, and it's
Speaker 4: not all right, with a drunk driver. If you that's
Speaker 4: what I was driver, Kenneth, how much they were drinking,
Speaker 4: where they were going, you could predict things.
Speaker 2: Kenneth, you will not acknowledge that if you were hit
Speaker 2: by a drunk driver today, that would have been a
Speaker 2: random act as far as your life is concerned, as.
Speaker 5: Far as my life is concerned, and if you're correct,
Speaker 5: because I don't have a control over every human being
Speaker 5: on the face of the planet and their consumption of alcohol.
Speaker 3: So that's right. So when we say random this we
Speaker 3: mean contexture.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: The only exception is that physicists have found that on
Speaker 4: a on a the small scale level, nature is ruled
Speaker 4: by something called quantum theory. And quantum theory this is
Speaker 4: what Einstein's objection was to it. Quantum theory has an
Speaker 4: inherent and unavoidable random this in it, and it's not
Speaker 4: due to a lack of our knowledge.
Speaker 3: It's it's just part of nature.
Speaker 2: So if I'm just curious now to get to it,
Speaker 2: thank you, Kenneth. He's the sort of caller that makes
Speaker 2: me proud of my listeners. A question to you, who
Speaker 2: is not a theist, have you ever read, to your
Speaker 2: satisfaction any any number any likelihood of intelligent life evolving
Speaker 2: being created, I guess I'll use the word just existing.
Speaker 2: The odds against us being around Do you do you
Speaker 2: have any number in your mind?
Speaker 3: No, I've read many different numbers.
Speaker 2: Actually, okay, but whoever writes about it, the odds are
Speaker 2: tremendously against us being here.
Speaker 4: Right, But we might have to also take those odds
Speaker 4: with the grain of salt, because people don't really know
Speaker 4: the exact mechanisms of evolution and how or even of
Speaker 4: planetary development to be able to say how unlikely a.
Speaker 2: Base is based on what we now know, all right,
Speaker 2: I can't say on what we may know one day
Speaker 2: based on what we now know. The odds are extraordinarily
Speaker 2: small or large, I guess. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: there are hundreds of billions of stars in our Yes,
Speaker 2: you're right, but with one hundred billion stars and one
Speaker 2: hundred billion galaxies, the chance that that bach will come
Speaker 2: out strikes me as infinitesimally small. And that would be
Speaker 2: that's one of my chief arguments for a god that
Speaker 2: at some point forget evolution questions and intelligent design questions.
Speaker 2: Just the odds question I'm asking you was now as
Speaker 2: a professor, as it was as a teacher, as a PhD,
Speaker 2: not as a believer or non believer. Is that is
Speaker 2: that not an argument for God? If the odds are
Speaker 2: so small or so large, I don't know how you
Speaker 2: put it in your language.
Speaker 4: Well, in a sense, it doesn't matter how I mean
Speaker 4: that there are other civilizations or that that we are here,
Speaker 4: that we are here, It doesn't really matter how how
Speaker 4: small the odds are, because if the odds are not zero, right,
Speaker 4: then there will be an intelligent civilization somewhere and and
Speaker 4: and they already being one.
Speaker 2: What if the odds are greater than the number of stars.
Speaker 4: If the odds of intelligent life are not zero, then
Speaker 4: the point is that if it's it doesn't matter if
Speaker 4: there there still could be an intelligence. I agree, civilization
Speaker 4: being there would naturally have more information that they have
Speaker 4: to take into account with the odds.
Speaker 2: But just as you said, there have to be a
Speaker 2: certain number of baseball games played for the better team
Speaker 2: to inevitably suppose it.
Speaker 3: That's a good example.
Speaker 4: Suppose the team A has a one in one thousand
Speaker 4: chance of beating Team B. Yeah, but you're then, but
Speaker 4: now we're looking, since we're already here, the series has
Speaker 4: been played, and we're saying the team a one.
Speaker 3: So what point is it to say that the.
Speaker 4: Teammate had one in one thousand chance of winning the series.
Speaker 4: We know that they won, so the odds.
Speaker 2: It's right, But I don't think that there are enough
Speaker 2: games to have bach come out of it. That's all
Speaker 2: or even or even you were all right, right, We're
Speaker 2: going to take more calls when we come back.
Speaker 1: This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2: Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here the final segment of a
Speaker 2: very fast moving hour. I must say I salute my
Speaker 2: guest Leonard modenew M l O D I. Now anyway,
Speaker 2: it's up at Praeger Radio dot com at the blog.
Speaker 2: The book is The Drunkard's Walk. I like that name,
Speaker 2: by the way, Thank you. How Randomness Rules Our Lives,
Speaker 2: which I think people would remember more readily than the title,
Speaker 2: But it's a good title. And he teaches at cal
Speaker 2: Tech and we're talking about randomness in life. I will
Speaker 2: did we do Alan? Did we do an Ultimate Issues
Speaker 2: hour on luck in God? We did? It's probably worth
Speaker 2: doing another time.
Speaker 3: As well.
Speaker 2: It's such a big deal that I want to comfort
Speaker 2: people on this matter. They really feel it's one or
Speaker 2: the other, and it's not. It's I don't think, I know,
Speaker 2: it's not. It's not a matter of you know, I
Speaker 2: feel you have a very powerful random or luck story
Speaker 2: with regard to your father who was in the Holocaust.
Speaker 2: Why don't you tell that?
Speaker 4: Well, my father was a resistance fighter in Poland during
Speaker 4: the war and then ended up in book Involved.
Speaker 2: Which is one of the German concentration.
Speaker 4: Camps, and somehow when he was there, he had the
Speaker 4: opportunity to steal a loaf of bread and he was starving.
Speaker 4: He was when he was liberated. Finally he was about
Speaker 4: eighty pounds and the Nazis noticed that this loaf of
Speaker 4: bread had been stolen, and they lined up everyone who
Speaker 4: had access to it in a row, and they said
Speaker 4: that they wanted the person who stole the bread to
Speaker 4: step forward, and nobody stepped.
Speaker 3: Forward or they would kill Well, nobody.
Speaker 4: Stepped forward, and then they said that, okay, we're going
Speaker 4: to start at this end and we're going to just
Speaker 4: shoot all of you until the person either steps forward
Speaker 4: or you're all dead. And so my father told me
Speaker 4: that he figured everyone was going to die anyway, or
Speaker 4: he would die anyway. So he stepped forward and confessed
Speaker 4: to taking the loaf of bread, and he thought that
Speaker 4: they would immediately kill him, and instead they gave him
Speaker 4: a job as an assistant in the bakery, which is
Speaker 4: a completely random, unpredictable event, and it just I mean,
Speaker 4: this is the way the concentration camps were, according to
Speaker 4: the stories my father told, I could shoot you for
Speaker 4: looking at them the wrong way, or they could do this.
Speaker 4: And you know, if they had shot him, of course
Speaker 4: I wouldn't be here. And that's just one of many
Speaker 4: incidents in happening.
Speaker 2: Nor your kids, which is why murder is the worst crime,
Speaker 2: because you have not only killed that person, you have
Speaker 2: killed all the generations that would have come. There's a
Speaker 2: biblical basis for that, by the way, because when Cain
Speaker 2: kills Abel, God says to Cain, the bloods of your
Speaker 2: brother are crying out, not the blood and because of
Speaker 2: all the bloodline that would that has been killed anyway,
Speaker 2: this has been absolutely irriveting to me. The whole notion
Speaker 2: of randomness in life, folks, is so powerful. I'll tell
Speaker 2: you one thing, whether you're a believer or not. One
Speaker 2: thing that is critical is that this humbles us. If
Speaker 2: things go well in your life, I'm sure you may
Speaker 2: have contributed. But no matter how wonderful your kids, or
Speaker 2: your marriage, or your parents, or your work or your.
Speaker 3: Career, there's been a lot of luck.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Leondar lud Now.
Speaker 3: Thank you tomorrow.
Speaker 1: On Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
Speaker 2: As a rule, as a rule, there are many exceptions
Speaker 2: to this rule, but as a rule, you get treated
Speaker 2: back the way you treat people, and that will increase
Speaker 2: your happiness by and large. If you treat people decently,
Speaker 2: if you will be treated decently, and if you think
Speaker 2: that you are going through life getting shafted by everybody,
Speaker 2: there is something probably a little wrong in your perception.
Speaker 1: This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit dennispragger
Speaker 1: dot com for thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses,
Speaker 1: and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles.