Sorry, but this is one of the dumbest but over-confident posts I've seen. You completely misunderstand how probabilities work. As DudePersonA said, events defying statistical probability happen all the time. Each of us has almost zero chance of ever winning a lottery, but lotteries are won by someone constantly, just about every week. Another example: when people are asked to write down a series of dice rolls that should be indistinguishable from real dice rolls, they can always be spotted by researchers as fake dice rolls because people don't put enough improbable streaks in. The individual chance of the same number coming up multiple times in a row in a dice roll is extremely low, but they happen way more frequently than the human mind thinks it would.
So you can't just multiply a bunch of probabilities together like that and conclude "this would almost never happen." Things that statistically "would almost never happen" are happening to random people around the world all the time, because there are 7 billion of us rolling the dice of fortune every moment of our lives.
I could do this same sort of analysis you've done here, stripping events from all context and calculating their raw probabilities for a random member of the population, for literally anyone's life to make it sound completely implausible.
This sort of argument proves absolutely nothing.
And the cherry-on-top is that your citation for all these "scientific" "facts" and numbers is "epidemiology which I studied back in Uni". Like, what? That doesn't even make sense. Either you have an actual source of data for your numbers or you don't. "I studied this at school, trust me bro" is not a source...
Anyway, at the end of the day, could Abelius be lying about this? Sure, it's possible. But nothing in your post is proof of that in any way. Unless somebody has first-hand knowledge of his real-life situation, all people can do is just decide do they personally trust what he says or not. There is no way to prove he is lying with a bunch of numbers.
Winning the lottery is a rare event, but a single person winning the lottery five times in a row is astronomically rare. That's where epidemiology and statistics play a role. If you knew basic math, you wouldn’t be making that "argument."
Abelius constantly citing serious, low-probability personal tragedies as an excuse for delays follows the same principle. Someone might have cancer, someone else might be divorced, someone else might have depression, another maladaptive daydreaming. The probability of each single event happening in isolation is plausible, but when stacked together without a clear pattern, it becomes highly suspicious. And buddy, if you haven't seen all of the rollercoasters that have been going on in this thread, I don't know what to tell you.
You tried to generalize my argument, but you failed to account for conditional probability. Aka, the likelihood of multiple specific events occurring to the same person under suspicious circumstances.
> "Oh, your dad died from a shark attack at the age of 35 when you were 7? Well, the probability of being attacked by a shark for someone under 40 years old is this number, which is much less probable than being killed in a car accident, so do you really expect me to believe this bullshit?"
A shark attack is a random, external event with no direct incentive or motive.
In contrast, a game developer coming up with constant excuses to delay work is an intentional action with a clear pattern of behavior and motive: avoiding accountability.
A better analogy would be someone claiming to win the lottery five times in a row while refusing to provide the winning tickets. But you can't come up with a better analogy because you know...
Either you don't understand, or you’re purposefully ignoring that the discussion isn’t about isolated probability but about detecting patterns in behavior, which, everyone here detected
> "And the cherry-on-top is that your citation for all these 'scientific' 'facts' and numbers is 'epidemiology which I studied back in Uni.' Like, what? That doesn’t even make sense. Either you have an actual source of data for your numbers, or you don’t."
So, instead of addressing the numbers, you dismiss them by mocking the source?
Even if my original argument lacked a formal citation, that does not automatically invalidate the logic behind statistical analysis.
A better reply from you would have been to provide counter-evidence showing that such a series of events is more common than initially assumed. But you don't do this.
This is what pseudo-intellectualoids consider "a fallacy of argument from ignorance": I don’t see the data, so your argument must be wrong.
> "At the end of the day, could Abelius be lying about this? Sure, it’s possible. But nothing in your post is proof of that in any way."
If someone repeatedly claims highly improbable tragedies while delaying work, the burden of proof shifts to them to provide credibility. Usually, in legal and financial situations, those kinds of patterns of unlikely excuses (which, statistically, we say are suspicious) are grounds for investigation.
If someone calls in sick to work once, it’s normal. If someone calls in sick every week with different rare illnesses, and when they run out, comes up with more outlandish situations, well, buddy, that's suspicious.
You know, skepticism is justified when patterns defy normal statistical expectations. And this is the case.
You misunderstand probability, dismiss valid skepticism, and you can't even use basic logic to defend the guy.
Sources:
1. Risk of Breast Cancer in Women Aged 40–44:
You must be registered to see the links
2. Annual Rate of Major Depressive Episodes in Men:
You must be registered to see the links
3. Incidence of Parental Child Abduction by Mothers After Divorce:
You must be registered to see the links
