What are the odds!? **

** - given various pre-conditions.

"If you're ever sad, just remember the Earth is 4.543 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie"

This has been making the rounds on Facebook following Bowie's recent death. It's pretty amazing, right? Except not really. Because while I could certainly calculate an infinitesimal probability that two human lifespans overlap in a 4.5 billion year window, that's simply not the right constraint for the claim. For one, humans, and written history of particular individuals, has only existed for a few thousand years. Already our odds are a million times better than before. Furthermore, such sentiments tend to come out right when someone well-known dies, in which case there's a 100% chance that anyone reading such a sentiment is alive at the same time. And therein lies a perhaps unintuitive truth: that we only perceive when we exist, so anything we perceive sets a very significant condition on any probability we might think about. If the problem is simply "what are the odds you're alive at the same time as a famous person who just died (or while they are alive)", the real odds are something, but the odds, to you, are 100%. You only perceive in the case where you are also alive, thus limiting the conditional probability significantly.

There are a number of similar realizations. A friend recently posted a picture of her great grandmother, along with the story behind the picture. It was taken to commemorate buying a ticket for the maiden voyage of a certain ship named the Titanic. Gram had gotten out of line to tend to something with the kids who were not on the ship, and by the time she'd gone back, boarding had completed and gates were closed. She missed the ship, and therefore the iceberg, due to unlikely random circumstances. My friend effectively was saying, "look how close I came to never being here". But in the same vein, had she never been born, she wouldn't know it. Alternatively, being born guarantees that the unlikely event did occur. Again, allowing for perspective alters the odds.

Another friend's grandfather flew on bombers during WW2. If I recall right, he was one of the first to successfully complete 25 missions without being maimed or killed. He then met a nice lady, they had a son who also met a nice lady, and my friend became. How lucky he is that his grandfather was one of the few who survived! This is essentially the lottery winner concept. Someone gets lucky, and only because they got lucky are they there to evaluate it. Sure they got the winning ticket, but the ones who didn't, never found out. They never even knew tickets were being passed out.

The notion of "how lucky I am to be here" is funny too. Every single one of us has defied great odds to be here. I myself am born to a father who would be dead at age 2 weeks had a Russian bomb detonated when it hit the next building, a mother who survived some serious lung problems as a child and capsizing into a stormy lake as a teen, a grandmother who had to walk through the raging winter to get away from incoming Russian troops, another grandmother was had been ordered shot if she tried to sneak the kids away, and two grandfathers who were POWs during WW2. Many others weren't so lucky; their prospective offspring are not around to ponder their unluckiness.

Some wonder how we, as a race, have defied cosmic odds to exist in this universe. Isn't it a miracle? Maybe, to some other observer. But to us, the only possible odds are 100%.

A week with an RDX

My wonderful little Acura RSX-S had to go to the doctor for a transplant. The seatbelt buckle wasn't quite right and was causing the airbag light to come on (which could end with the airbag not deploying, I suppose). This was diagnosed in 5 minutes by regular mechanic, but since he doesn't do warranty service and Acura of Bellevue ("AB") does, he sent me there to get it fixed.

I checked into AB on Dec 30. They told me they'd get back to me by the afternoon. They also quoted me an estimate of $144 for the service (which I hope won't be on my bill because, warranty). They were nice enough to give me a loaner: an Acura RDX. Not really my top choice, but whatever, it's for a day ... until AB called late Dec 30 to let me know that they'll need to replace the buckle and need to order the part. I'd have to keep the loaner until Jan 2. They then called me on Jan 2 to let me know that, just kidding, it won't be here til Jan 5.

Aside about AB: I had already told them the issue was diagnosed by my guy when I dropped the RSX off in the morning (actually, told them when I booked the appointment on Dec 22). It still took them a full day to diagnose it and get the part ordered (or at least I'm concluding that from when they called me). That delay could absolutely affect when the part gets in. I really wish there was some reference concept where they could have just ordered the buckle based on my guy's diagnosis even before I dropped the RSX off. Sure, they could spend some time to confirm it, but they'd be ready and we'd all be done by now. I'm still curious to see what happens with the $144 estimate, hopefully that will just disappear.

So now I've got this beast mobile for a week. I'm not a big-car guy, so this isn't really up my alley and thus I'm not going to looooove driving it around. But that's ok. I can still try and take an objective look at the car. Marisa immediately commented that it "is really nice to sit up high" and that "it looks really good in our garage". She also commented that the seats are really nice. That's all great. In fact, the car overall is hard to fault. The 279 peak hp and 252lb-ft peak torque drag its 3800 pounds around quite easily; acceleration is good for the most part, the engine sounds great. The seats are great, there's plenty of space and all that. The general interface is clean, things are where I'd expect them to be (though Hondas are pretty consistent car-to-car, so it could just be that I'm used to them). I personally don't love the whole navigation system center console thing, but that's me being generally grumpy about such things.

What about my quibbles? Sure, I find the following weird:
1. The shift lever for the auto has a button that you kinda pull up instead of pull back. Marisa and I both found it weird, but this is the kind of thing you get over by the 3rd time and stop thinking about.
2. The driver's side mirror's outer edge is curved to give a very wide angle of view, which is distracting because the edges of what you see in the mirror are heavily distorted.
3. The seat heaters (and the heater in general) take a while to get going. The seats in Marisa's Jetta, for example, will feel warm within 10 seconds. The RDX takes a couple minutes. The RDX also takes a minute or so to start blowing hot air. I think this is a philosophical thing with Honda; they don't want to add an electric heater to their HVAC? My RSX is also a little slow to get the heat blowing.
4. I don't like the material used for the steering wheel. It's too smooth and I'd worry it'd slip if my hands were sweaty. Marisa said the same.

Nothing terrible really, which is a lot more than I can say for some other cars I've driven around.
There is, however, one other thing and this surprised me because it seems so un-Honda. The transmission is slow. There's really no two ways about it: shifts take a long time. I noticed while driving it in D that while it has very nice acceleration once going (like from 30 to 50, or even from rolling to whatever), it's a little sluggish off the line. To debug this more, I popped it over into Sport mode and drove it around with the paddle shifters.

First, the car doesn't really like to stay in 1st gear if you're not flooring it. In my couple trials, it flipped over to 2nd around 3000 rpm (despite the 6500 rpm redline). As most people who drive stick can attest, cars get a little twitchy in 1st, so maybe this is ok. But, the shift takes about 1.5 seconds (whether I initiate the shift with the paddle or not):

Click (+) paddle, instantly see dash show next gear, wait 1.5 seconds, see RPMs actually move (meaning that's when the next gear was actually engaged). The same delay is present between every pair of gears. If you double-click the paddle, it won't show confirmation. The dash will show the next gear, then the gear will engage, then there's a little pause, then the dash shows the 2nd next gear, then that gear will engage. A double-click has an end-to-end runtime of about 4 seconds, with a distinct ambiguous middle zone before you know that the 2nd shift is coming.

This lead to a curious realization: the car would be better served without a 1st gear (or just have 1st be a 'low' gear, out of the way for usual driving). Sure, getting to 20 takes a touch longer, but there's enough torque that you can't remotely make full use of 1st anyways. 2nd isn't much slower, and it avoids one slow shift while getting up to normal speeds. I started just flipping the car into 2nd after stopping, and the driving experience was a lot better.