Is there any chance that a 1300 rated player can beat a 2700 rated player?

Oh, and the claim is made even more unfalsifiable by the fact that, if the 1300 did win, people would just say it didn't count for some reason

That may be one good condition for a troll topic: make an unfalsifiable claim.

The mind plays tricks on its' self. It can not comprehend ideas as infinite probabilities and 0 percentages. In attempts to make sense of it all, the mind often makes irrational assumptions. Such as ... well anything is possible . Not logical as Spock would say.

Who here,would argue that a 100 rating could best a 3000 rating? That there is a "chanch" given enough games and time. If you subscribe to the monkey and typewriter analagy save your breath for other fools.

"Who here,would argue that a 100 rating could best a 3000 rating?"

That would be much crazier, for sure, but no, I don't think it's off limits to suggest that this is also possible.

I mean, what are you afraid of... that instead of saying there is a 1 in a trillion chance for the 1300 to win, now I have to say there is a 1 in a googleplex chance for the 100 to win? I'm not exactly going to run out of "room" when we're dealing with an infinite amount of potential decimal places.

"In attempts to make sense of it all, the mind often makes irrational assumptions. Such as ... well anything is possible"

Well, right. And irrational assumptions like "it seems like this couldn't happen," therefore, "it couldn't." But when you're dealing with humanity that won't really fly. I can't see planets, but that's because of my human limitation to see them, not because they can't exist.

"It can not comprehend ideas as infinite probabilities and 0 percentages."

Right. It can't.

A 1300 player should not be permitted to set a board up for a 2700 player never mind play them.

Elubas... ur using the "infinite" possibilities arguement. I suggest to you "infinite" is just a made up word to try and explain a concept. What if infinity does not exist? In reality a finite amount of outcomes exist. People throw this word around as if they comprehend the implications. Infinity. Who can say they comprehend it? To use it as proof that anything can happen is not rational imo.

People believed the universe to infinite. Scientists now say it is not so. They use different methods of describing causes and effects that are observed.

Well, no, I don't know that infinity exists. That doesn't mean that it's irrational to use infinity. It's not like I'm saying my beliefs don't rest on assumptions, including the existence of infinity, or a state of affairs in the world that infinity completely and accurately describes. If my assumption that infinity exists is false I'll drop my claim. But it's not irrational to have an assumption and reason from it :)

From my end, I just think it's more arbitrary to assume that infinity doesn't exist at this point, rather than the other way around. For example, those arguing for a finite universe have to show what an "end" of a universe even is, or could be (ends are a part of the definition of finite). Whereas with the infinite, I don't see a particular problem... sure, we always picture things that have ends, but that can be easily explained by the fact that we only care (usually) about things that have ends. We wouldn't watch an infinitely long movie because we wouldn't consider it worth it, and we would never get the full beginning, middle, and end that we want so much. That doesn't mean that there would be something inherently "wrong," at any point, of adding something more to a movie, whether it was a 5 hour movie, 10 hour, etc. You just kinda add it :) If you want to add even more, add more :)

So... yes, I do comprehend the implications of infinity. I don't know if infinity exists, but I do know what it would mean if it did exist.

"To use it as proof that anything can happen is not rational imo."

Well for me, I'd make the weaker claim that we can't prove that it's not the case that anything can happen (excluding things that are impossible by definition). Which is indeed weaker. It might be that there are things that really can't happen, like a 1300 beating a 2700, but whether it can or can't, we don't have a good, rational way of truly ruling out this possibility 100%. So I do think that, our information right now is not enough to know that a 1300 beating a 2700 is impossible... perhaps if we had more info we would be able to know this.

I mean really, I think it's the concept of "ends" that we made up that is more arbitrary than the concept of "infinity." Ends clearly exist, but then we try to make them exist everywhere. Infinity is just making note of the times where it doesn't really make sense to say that some particular thing has an end. All infinity means is that there is no end. It's just saying, I'm not going to add an "end" in some random place just because you like ends. It's kind of simpler than the finite in that way, because the finite has this extra component called an "end," whereas the infinite does not.

I don't understand the question "does infinity exist?" as if it's an object you can point to. It's like asking if 3 exists. I don't know that it's as accurate to say 3 exists as it is to say the concept 3 has descriptive and practical value.

The concept of infinity has descriptive and practical value.

A few (primitive) thoughts on space (as I don't know anything about up to date physics lol!):

Is this a kind of infinite regression problem? For nothingness to exist, aren't we assuming there must be a space for things to not exist in? If we add something to occupy that space, it would no longer be nothingness, so there must be a framework for "nothingness" to reside in. But as soon as you pick a framework, then in reference to what does that framework reside? And then you need a reference for that, and then a... etc.

The way we think and our language isn't suited for this type of problem I think.

"I don't know that it's as accurate to say 3 exists as it is to say the concept 3 has descriptive and practical value."

I would take "3 exists" to mean, "there is some independent thing to which we're referring when we say '3.' " So yeah, our word three is made up, but it's used to represent something real. Just like how if you said apples exist, you're not talking about the word "apple," you're talking about whatever is represented by it, with the help of using that word so that people know what you're talking about.

"For nothingness to exist, aren't we assuming there must be a space for things to not exist in?"

Maybe we are. And that might show that, the attempted argument for the universe not existing involves admitting the existence of the universe. It kind of shows how existence sort of dominates everything we talk about. It's sort of along these lines that I think we can know that we exist, even in the pure philosophical sense. Our concept of us not existing actually is, in some sense, our concept of existence; a "genuine" concept of nonexistence may not truly exist (no pun intended, it just kinda turned out that way haha).

If by proving you don't exist, you end up conceding that you exist, then it seems like you can find existence no matter how you look. That's about as good a proof as any for knowing of our existence.

(So for example, if you have perceptions that you exist, but then you doubt the accuracy of those perceptions, you are already assuming that you exist to be able to judge the quality of those perceptions. So you're assuming that you exist at least in some sense, even as you doubt yourself.)

lol I realize I was supposed to be talking about infinity but I ended up doing some Cartesian argument for existence, haha. Sorry about that. Well, if I observe something that has no end, and I see no reason for it to have an end, I would say I'm observing something infinite, such as the universe. True, if I tried to enumerate what was going on in every inch of the universe, I would never finish, but that doesn't mean I can't understand that the universe doesn't have an end, and thus that it's infinite. Infinity would just be the fact that our universe allows for this possibility.

This is the perfect thread for starting a ".9 repeating decimal is the same number as 1..." argument ;).

How long is any coastline?

Answer: infinitely long

It's odd though because I did see a youtube video of a physicist saying something about nothingness, and he stressed that he really meant nothing at all. Like true nothingness.

But there's that regression problem. Ok, so there's (apparently) a point where we have no matter, energy, not even space or time, but then what is the framework for these things to not exist in? And if there truly is no framework at all, then how can you put something into that kind of true nothing?

Our minds don't work that way, at least they're not inclined to.

I guess we can always compare to what is the case. So if we know what having energy is, we can distinguish that from when there isn't energy (otherwise the term energy would be kind of pointless, if we just said there was energy no matter what we were looking at  ). And then you would just do that with space, time, and so on. If saying something has space involves saying x, then just look at the situations where we wouldn't say x. I guess to make those claims would involve some sort of framework, but whatever he was talking about wouldn't be something that had matter, energy, space etc. I don't know though.