april fool's! sophistry 101: the difference between sophistry and philosophy

a friend of mine recently tried to convince me that the odds of rolling a 6 using a die are 1/2 instead of 1/6. the reason? he claims that, "you either get a six or not," and that 1/6 "is incorrect because that is the odds of a cause, not of the answer." he didn't convince me, and i still believe that the odds of rolling a 6 are 1/6, not 1/2. but just for fun, i put together an argument for his position that the odds of rolling a 6 are 1/2. so, after reading my piece, see if you become convinced that the odds of rolling a 6 are 1/2!

to make my point easier to demonstrate, i changed the problem from rolling a 6 to rolling a 1 or a 2 -- the odds thus being 2/6 = 1/3. but i then explained why the odds of rolling a 1 or a 2 are not 1/3, but are still 1/2.

we have to measure an essence for each possibility (for 1 and 2, it is being a whole number less than 7 and greater than 0 that is not 3-6, for 3-6 it is being a whole number less than 7 and greater than 0 that is not 1-2). so, let's say the essence for 1-2 is "C" and for 3-6 is "D" -- the essence is something the numbers share in common in spite of being different numbers. so the odds of getting a number in set X -- 1 or 2 -- is 1/3, and in set Y -- 3, 4, 5, or 6 -- 2/3. however, upon getting the result, you get something more than a number in set X or Y -- you get a number that has something in addition to the essence, so that additional something makes the number a "the" (the 1, the 2, the 3, etc.). the emergence of "the" as a realized outcome, an end-state, retroactively defines what produces a new set of odds that are "answer-based" instead of "cause-based". whatever number is the realized outcome is a "the" due to it holding a specific and unique status for that particular situation and outcome, and the other possible outcomes that share its essence become a part of the "the" designation. ontologically, the "the" aspect of the realized outcome is thus retroactively shared with other possible outcomes that share its essence. thus, by sharing an essence "C", if one rolls a die and the outcome is a 2, then that is "the 2", and simply through association with the shared essence "C", 1, which remains unrealized, attains "the" status, becoming "the 1", through its shared essence with "the 2", not because it realized its own "the" in an outcome. a good way to characterize this would be to say that the "the" for "the 2" is primary or active, whereas the "the" for "the 1" is secondary or passive. now, the numbers that were not realized in the outcome also have an essence -- "D" -- and because none of the numbers realized its "the" status, they can only be described in terms of this essence, thus being "a" (as opposed to "the" because the "a" numbers are not "the" realized outcome but are instead unrealized outcomes, thus being non-specific to that particular situation since any of those numbers -- thus, "a" number from that set -- satisfies the designation of being an unrealized outcome; "a" numbers can only be considered "the" when considered as all possible unrealized outcomes, but we are assessing the scenario from the perspective of a single event, thus comparing the realized outcome with an unrealized outcome for each number not with the unrealized outcomes of those numbers constituting a set of those numbers in totality viewed as a single entity, i.e., "the unrealized outcomes") type of "D", not "the" for a particular number in the set of Y. as such, realized outcomes attain "the" status and retroactively encompass the others in its set, giving them the "the" designation due to a shared essence, and the unrealized outcomes remain as an "a" status for everything in its set with a certain essence, e.g. any of the numbers 3-6 in set Y are "a" number that share essence "D". thus, there are only two types of outcomes: a realized outcome, resulting in a "the" designation, and an unrealized outcome, resulting in an "a" designation. since designation occurs after the outcome and not before the outcome, we cannot correlate the number of times a "the" designation occurs for a set sharing essence "C" vs the number of times a "the" designation occurs for a set sharing essence "D". rather, we simply take any realized outcome and compare it to the set of unrealized outcomes to determine odds. so, in this case, "the" pertains to 2 and retroactively to 1, forming the "the" category. numbers 3-6, in not being realized in the outcome, are then designated as the "a" category. so the "the" category has been realized, and the "a" category has not, resulting in two possibilities. because the "the" designation occurs after the realization of a possible outcome, we cannot correlate realized outcomes to probability designated before the outcome is realized. thus we have two possibilities: the realized outcome is "the", and the unrealized outcome is "a". because the transition from before the event occurs to after the event occurs determines the categories, probabilities determined before the event occurs are useless, and we cannot determine proper odds using those. however, the categories that exist after the event occurs do give us odds because we are placing a value on "what is" -- the realized outcome category, the "the" category. by definition, let's say "what is" has a value of "s". the opposite of "what is" is "what is not what is" -- the unrealized outcome category, the "a" category. and this is not to say what is not what is is everything except s in whatever our assumed domain is; what it means is that there is a negative value for every positive value. so the value of "what is not what is" is -s. however, when you take the absolute value of -s, the value is s. so "what is" is s and "what is not what is" is -s, but since -s has a value of s, then we have a total domain of 2s. so the odds of attaining an outcome of "the" is s/2s = 1/2, and the odds of attaining an outcome of "a" is s/2s = 1/2.