somebody wrote:
> Proof of the pudding is in the eating. Unless *you* start digging under your
> house, my objection stands.
> 

My apartment complex managers would be very upset if I did that.

Besides, the chance that there is a diamond pipe here is very slim, call
it one in a billion. Since a mine would cost me more than a million, and
the return would be less than 10^15 dollars, there is no reason for me
to do so. Should the price of diamonds sky rocket, that might change.

> Plus there are two additional issues. One is the law of diminishing returns
> (or the utility function, whatever economists like to call it). Second, and
> more important, is that we have limited resources (especially time/life
> span). A one in  googolplex probability of something, even if the potential
> return is googolplex ^ googolplex dollars and the cost is one dollar, is not
> worth attempting, and for all intents and purposes, that probability is
> zero.
> 
> 

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.

Now, I can't get WolframAlpha to solve the birthday paradox for that
large of a number, but the formula should be
((10^(10^100))!)/(((10^(10^100))^n)(((10^(10^100))-n)!))
or prettier
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=((10^(10^100))!)/(((10^(10^100))^n)(((10^(10^100))-n)!))%3D0.50

Now, if what you really mean is that there is a one in a googolplex
chance that the chance of winning is non-zero, that would be a different
story.

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