wandelaar

Has the picture of your probabilities for the size of the right heap the form of the green graph?

@ Lost in Translation If I understand correctly: - Your number "Stack" is my number "H" being the number of stalks in the main heap. - Your number "Right" (before taking one stalk away) is my number "R" being the number of stalks in the right heap. - Your number "Left" is my number "L" being the number of stalks in the left heap. - The number X = Stack * 4/10 determines the boundaries for the variation of "Right" (R) and "Left" (L) where: Stack/2 > Right > Stack/2 - Stack * 4/10 = Stack/10 & Left = Stack - Right - All integer values of Right that fall between the boundaries are equally likely to occur.

Thank you Harmen and Ed! I'm thinking about doing a theoretical calculation of the probabilities myself in another topic (it will contain some "good old" math!), but there is one problem before I can start with that. I don't know the probabilities belonging to the division of the heap of stalks in two when done by someone who regularly consults the I Ching by using the yarrow stalk method. What repeatedly happens in the procedure of throwing the I Ching is that the main heap of H stalks is divided roughly in half in a left heap of L stalks and a right heap of R stalks. Now a division with L or R is 0 or 1 would not be considered a legitimate division of roughly in half, while a division with L ≈ R ≈ H/2 would be considered OK. So we would expect something like a Bell Curve to represent the probabilities of L and R. Something like this: But what are realistic values for the probabilities of the number of stalks L and R?

Yes - I like to know. It would be highly relevant to this topic and to his calculation of the probabilities.

@ Harmen The pdf was an interesting read, but I'm afraid it didn't answer my question. Let me quote from Google Books: See the part in the red box drawn by me. That's where the procedure deviated from the way I have seen the I Ching thrown on YouTube. Why are the stalks on the right pile not counted by fours until one, two, three, or four stalks remain?

No doubt voidisyinyang will go on spamming this topic (and other topics) from here on in stead of starting a topic of his own to discuss his exotic theories, but let's ignore him as best as we can.

@ Harmen Looks like the pdf answers my question. Thank you. It will take me some time to study.

Lao tzu wasn't the type of guy to endlessly waste words on saying the same thing over and over again, and he said so himself. So I consider it an unhelpful interpretation to see all the paradoxes (including the one on the square) of the Tao Te Ching as simply pointing us to nonduality. If it were all about nonduality than one chapter would have been enough.

I took a look at the calculations of Hacker (chapter 9) just now but they seem to based on an uncommon variant of the yarrow stalk method. Is that so, and why is that? What do you think about it?

It is spamming, because his posts are completely irrelevant. And I explained why. And this is happening not once but time and again in all kinds of topics. If you want to have your free and open discussion with voidisyinyang, I wish you success. But please start another topic for that. Good luck.

The probabilities for the coin method can be objectively calculated, but for the yarrow stalk method there is a personal element involved. People will not all divide the heap of stalk in two in the same manner. Some will be rather nonchalant, others will try to get close to a division in half (approximately the same number of stalk left and right). So the probabilities for how a heap of stalks will be divided in two will not be the same for all users of the I Ching. Thus there might be a difference in the way Hacker and Lost in Translation solve this problem, and that would lead to some differences in the found probabilities for the hexagrams. Further the number of iterations might be to small for a precise estimation of the probabilities of the least likely hexagrams.

Aaarrrggghhh! Not again. It was such a nice topic, with sensible posts and concrete results. Who is going to stop this spamming pseudoscientist?

@ OldDog The posts of voidisyinyang are irrelevant to the experiment that is proposed here. We want to investigate whether or not the probabilities for the different hexagrams in case the program is used for serious consultations of the I Ching deviate from those probabilities in the case of pure chance (that is: when nothing is asked of the I Ching program). The process of interpretation of the hexagrams itself is not further investigated because we don't need to for estimating the probabilities. We concentrate on the probabilities only. In my openingspost I wrote: I hope voidisyinyang will respect that.

In my view the basic results until now are the computer program itself and the list of the number of times each hexagram turned up when the program did 1,000,000,000 throws. On the basis of that list you can calculate the estimated probability for each hexagram as the number of times it turned up divided by 1,000,000,000.

Thinking about it again I see a problem here. I underestimated the differences in probability of the different hexagrams. When we find just one hexagram (possibly with some moving lines) than that's the hexagram to work with, but when we find the estimated probabilities of all hexagrams (as is the case with the computer program) then it might happen that the deviation from pure chance for an unlikely hexagram is greater than the deviation from pure chance of a more likely hexagram that then because of its "head start" turns out to be the "winner". But one could say that more paranormal influence was invested in raising the probability of the losing hexagram, and that the interpretation should also reckon with that. So interpreting the results of the computer program when used for throwing the I Ching will after all be much more complicated because those results will contain hugely more information than the traditional method using yarrow stalks.

@ Michael Sternbach I will try to give a simplified explanation (leaving out all kinds of subtleties that would have to be dealt with in case this project would eventually result in serious scientific research): Look at the case where we throw a die the huge amount of 1,000,000,000 times and the face with 4 dots turns up let's say 166,749,217 times. Then we can use 166,749,217 divided by 1,000,000,000 that is 0.166749217 as an estimation of the probability that the face with 4 dots will turn up in one throw. Now in the same way we can estimate the probabilities of finding certain hexagrams by means of the computer program written by Lost in Translation that simulates throwing the I Ching by the yarrow stalk method. Now the program not only estimates the probability of one hexagram but the probabilities of all hexagrams. Problem is that the program takes many hours to estimate the probabilities of all hexagrams. If we had a program that could do the work in a few minutes than anybody could test at home whether or not paranormal influences are at work when he or she uses the program for throwing the I Ching in a serious consultation. Such influences must than appear as highly unlikely deviations of the then estimated probabilities from the already estimated probabilities found by Lost in Translation. That's how matters stand as of today.

There are no correct or incorrect definitions. But some definitions correspond to common usage and others don't. And common usage may vary from one country to another (or if one wants to be absolutely precise even from one person to another). So asking for the real Taoist to stand up is sure to end in chaos or heated debate. Better to define the different types of Taoists in rather broad categories and leave it at that.

For those willing to try this at home, here's a piece of π's binary expansion: http://www.befria.nu/elias/pi/binpi.html I will be happy to hear the results! Does using the zero's and one's from the expansion work just as well as throwing coins? (Let's use: 0 = Heads, 1 = Tails) I suggest that you start with the first three digits to represent the result of the first throwing of the three coins. The second three digits represent the result of the second throwing of the three coins. And so on...

In this topic I wish to discuss some other possibilities for testing the non-random character of the I Ching. We already had a discussion about one method. See here: https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/46950-tests-for-the-non-random-character-of-the-i-ching/ If you want to talk about that method than please post your messages there. The same as applies in the other topic applies here: The purpose of this topic is exploring ways to test whether or not working with the I Ching shows patterns in the found hexagrams that are impossible to explain when the hexagrams that turn up are purely random. This topic is expressly not about belief or disbelief or anecdotal evidence! So please don't spam this topic to death as happened with previous topics of mine. If you are not interested in exploring systematic ways to test the I Ching than please leave us alone.

How about this: The number π is completely determined in its binary expansion. For more about pi see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi and about its binary expansion see: https://oeis.org/A004601 Now the zero's and one's from this expansion are pseudorandom, they are completely determined by the number π but their appearance in the expansion looks random nevertheless. And there is no way that a situation on the current moment or a question asked could be of influence on the placement of the zero's and one's in π's binary expansion. So when using the string of zero's and one's from the binary expansions of π in stead of the results of throwing coins would give equally satisfying results in consulting the I Ching, than we can conclude that the I Ching doesn't need paranormal influences on random processes for its use as an oracle.

It is better to have the distribution of hexagrams follow the Pareto principle than the raw data, for the raw data isn't used in the eventual interpretation of a throw of the I Ching but the hexagrams are. I have some other ideas too about testing the I Ching, but I will open another topic about that. Maybe sometime in the future we or others will again pick up this thread, and it better stay focused as it now is on the one particular testing approach that is investigated here.

It's only natural that you feel sad, equanimity can and will be restored later.

Seems to me that it has everything to do with upholding an unrealistic sense of self importance and with "selling oneself" in view of career opportunities.

OK - thanks you for all the hard work you put into this.

Ah! Sorry. Didn't see the edit before.