"Sabrina Kilian" <ski### [at] vtedu> wrote in message
news:4b0fc0f4@news.povray.org...
> somebody wrote:

> To you, maybe that is the case. To me, if I have a 1 in a googolplex
> chance of getting g^g returned, I would be spending at least 100 bucks.
> Minutely small chances still have a non-zero chance of occuring. Lets
> say that, over some time, 100 googolplex people played this chance game
> once each. Chances are that 100 people would have gotten that massive
> return.

Ah but I am not 100 googolplex people. Nor can I play the game 100
googolplex times. Neither, for that matter, can whole of humanity even if we
dedicate every second to the job, even if jackpot is infinite. This is where
naive application of calculating returns fails: We don't have unlimited
time/tries for games with vanishingly small probabilities to make playable,
no matter what the payout. See St Petersburg paradox.

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