Inevitability - fact or philosophical question?

[Grinkle]

TL;DR

Given sufficient trials, is it a logical fact that all possible outcomes will eventually occur, or is this a point on which reasonable people can disagree?

The question is motivated by pondering MWI and also a universe of infinite extent where all possible configurations (even the set of least likely configurations) might or perhaps must be found an infinite number of times. Seems easy to make absurd, but that doesn't mean its not true, I guess.

Somewhere is there a universe where I was born and as soon as I became old enough I decided to sit in a chair and flip a coin and record the results year after year until I died of old age? And in that universe, people decided to keep me well fed and cared for me as best they could for no particular reason? That seems highly unlikely, but I don't think any law of physics precludes it. Really hard to get my head around anything that can happen must happen given enough trials.

 

[fresh_42]

This is far too vague to be answered in any reasonable way. That is why we introduced Lebesgue integration and sigma algebras.

Let's say you randomly pick a real number. What are the chances to pick $0$? What are "enough" trials? MWI is in my opinion a theoretical construct to solve the measuring problem, something like virtual particles. It should be discussed in physics, since mathematicians are lost if you cannot define the measure space you are settling your question in. Anyway, it is also too close to philosophy the way it is worded.

This thread is closed.