my deepest apology to the alternate realitys

[meow mix]

the alternates where mccain pulled ahead in a miracle, and privately isnt feeling too healthy at the moment.
infinite multiverse theory say there are a great many worlds where this is the case.

man i do NOT want to be in your shoes right now!

:scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared:

[Occam Bandage]

1. I don't imagine there are many universes in which this occurred.

Honestly, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that any particular quantum event or series of quantum events could change things on such a specific, limited macro scale.

[jberryhill]

3. There are an infinite number of such universes

Going by the last stats on 538, in something like 2% of all alternative universes, McCain was elected. Now, you might think, "Well, at least it's only 2%." But the sad fact is that since there are an infinite number of alternate universes, then there are a buttload of them in which Obama lost.

The strangest ones are where both Obama and Prop. 8 lost. DU is a weird read there (I'd link to it, but once you open a link to DU in an alternate universe, it opens up a gateway for trolls).

[Occam Bandage]

4. That's not the way physics works.

That 2% figure represented uncertainty in polling methods. It did not mean that the election was a single quantum event with a 98% chance of producing Barack Obama and a 2% chance of producing John McCain.

[jberryhill]

5. Nonetheless it was a non-zero probability

There were 999,999 one-in-a-million things that didn't happen to me today.

[Occam Bandage]

7. Allow me an analogy, if you will.

We each roll a standard die inside a box the other cannot see. We're playing a simple game: if the total of our dice is even, you win; if the total of our dice is odd, I win.

Suppose you have rolled a 3. Suppose I have rolled a 4, but it is in its box and you cannot see it. After you look at your die, you could, with full justification, say that you have a 50% chance of winning; no statistician would look in your box and dispute your claim. However, that does not mean that if you rewind time to the moment you made that declaration and play the universe from that moment forward one million times, that you will win approximately five hundred thousand games. You do not actually have a 50% chance of winning. You have a 0% chance of winning; your 50% figure was based on incomplete data. It did not so much represent your actual chance of winning as it did the average chance of winning of a hypothetical person whose situation matched your data and with all other variables random.

On election day, John McCain did not actually have a 2% chance of winning. His chance of winning was so small that I am hesitant to say it is anything but zero. I do not believe that any chain of quantum events starting on Nov. 4th could have caused the election of John McCain.

[Morning Dew]

2. apologies to Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less McCain-ified,
And that has made all the difference

[El Fuego]

6. I'm jealous of the alternate realities that got President Gore in 2000.