Didn't you already say that?Yeh take it I know I'm in the right but whatever (=.
Is it possible to expect the unexpected?
Started by jcrdude, Jul 04 2010 10:07 PM
72 replies to this topic
#51
Sweeney
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Posted 18 July 2010 - 04:25 PM
#52
luvsmyncis
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I have no friends.
Posted 18 July 2010 - 04:34 PM
Didn't you already say that?
Where's my fucking banana?
#53
Sweeney
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Posted 18 July 2010 - 04:38 PM
Where's my fucking banana?
One God'd Own Brand Original Banana.
#54
luvsmyncis
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I have no friends.
Posted 18 July 2010 - 04:58 PM
What the hell? What the hell am I looking at? Are those seeds? What? What?
One God'd Own Brand Original Banana.
In any case, I certainly wasn't expecting that.
#56
emerkeng
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Posted 18 July 2010 - 05:19 PM
One God'd Own Brand Original Banana.
Are you going to eat that? LOOKS GOOD.
#57
Sweeney
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Posted 18 July 2010 - 05:21 PM
Good luck digesting it.Are you going to eat that? LOOKS GOOD.
#58
Adina
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Posted 19 July 2010 - 06:21 PM
"It's unexpected that it will happen, but I have a feeling it might."
You're expecting something that's unlikely. The word unexpected can be interpreted not necessarily in its literal sense.
But that's just my opinion.
You're expecting something that's unlikely. The word unexpected can be interpreted not necessarily in its literal sense.
But that's just my opinion.
#59
Casilla
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Posted 19 July 2010 - 08:42 PM
Alright, I'm basically going to repeat Sweeney in a different, more verbose way, because I feel the need to wall-o-text this thread.
The phrase "expect the unexpected" can be interpreted in two ways.
1. You have an event E which has different outcomes each with different possibilities of happening. There is a finite number of outcomes, given that all inputs into event E are known. For example, if you have two slices of bread, lettuce, bacon and tomato, you know that there is a probability of outcome O that when those ingredients come together, you are going to have a BLT sandwich. Within that outcome O, maybe there are different probabilities - what order the bacon, lettuce and tomato (O1, O2, O3...) are stacked within the two slices of bread, and what ratio of ingredients is used, etc. You may have leftover ingredients, or you may use them all. Or there may be outcome P where you don't use the tomato with all of its assorted child outcomes, outcome Q where you don't use lettuce, etc, outcome R where you don't use bacon, etc, outcome S where you only use 1 slice of bread, etc, outcome T where you use no slices of bread, etc. And each of these outcomes have different probabilities based on what you *know* about the event. Perhaps you *know* the person with these ingredients doesn't like tomato and they looove bacon, so outcome P and its derivatives may have a higher probability than O, Q, S, T, etc, where you would think R would have the least chance of happening.
The phrase "expect the unexpected" in this case of finite number of outcomes is where you say, okay, yes, P is likely and R is unlikely, and it is unexpected that R would happen...but unexpected does not mean unknown as the OP implies. It just means "not expected", as in, you did not expect it to happen. Or surprising for the same. "Unforeseen" just means you don't know what's going to happen, not that you don't know the likelihood of what's going to happen.
2. We could also have an event E which has infinite (or approaching infinite) number of outcomes, where it isn't possible for you to really know all possible outcomes like the example above. This is usually in cases where you don't know all of the inputs into an event, and sometimes in cases where you don't know the process through which an event works. In normal sense, this is something we would consider for large and complex systems of events, such as the the weather, geological activity and the economy. Is it possible to predict the outcomes in these systems? Yes, usually by breaking down large events into a lot of small ones, trying to figure out how the small ones are going to work, and then seeing what cancels out to get you a final outcome. And sometimes, there may be a limited number of final outcomes (prices will rise, prices will fall, prices will remain about the same), and instead the infinite number of ways they could come about.
Like above, there's going to be probabilities of certain outcomes and the way those outcomes happen, and some outcomes are going to be a great deal more likely than others. But unlike the first example, there's also a large number of things you just don't know. You do not have all of the information available, such as all of the inputs and all of the factors that influence an outcome. And this is where this phrase comes in. You "expect the unexpected" by acknowledging that something can happen that you can't predict, and part of "expecting the unexpected" is recognizing it and reacting to it.
Let me use an example that I rarely get to use because it rarely fits into anything I'm talking about, and actually, I could think of a better analogy but I want to use this one.
In the early 90s, there was basically one major ISP - CompuServe. It had a million users, which was far, far, far more than anyone else out there had. Prodigy was it's biggest competitor, followed by GEnie and a few smaller ISPs like AOL - but CompuServe had the most features, more connectivity and reliability, and what-have-you. Back then, the Internet as a place for people to come together and meet mostly existed within the internal ISP chatrooms. It was a lot harder (and more expensive) to get hosting - there certainly weren't any free hosts around then, or Facebooks or Myspaces for networking. There were BBSes and Usenet, but that was for the more savvy users. And there was no AIM, MSN or ICQ. If you were going to talk to someone, it was going to most likely be in an internal chat room. So a lot of subscriptions came from referrals - people referred their friends on to a certain ISP so that they could more easily communicate with them. Some people had multiple services. And CompuServe went further than any other ISP by creating "topic forums" - which were chat rooms with attached message boards and filing sharing, which were run by volunteer community moderators and CompuServe SysOps. This was an unparalleled kind of customization and personalization available. A lot of companies (especially hardware and software) had forums to provide customer service for their users. People would join forums based on interest, and communities would build, and by 1995 CompuServe had a whopping 3 million users still paying hourly rates.
So why is CompuServe dead today? It exhibited a lot of customer-unfriendly corporate behavior. SysOps were notorious for ignoring forum creation requests, as were higher management within the company. As CompuServe's user base grew, interests diverged, and more users wanted more forums available. However, CompuServe would either ignore requests, or make forums that their own management wanted. Another thing was pricing. In 1996, AOL went flat-rate at $19.99. CompuServe responded by going flat-rate at $24.95, but not until 1997. Why didn't they match the rate immediately? Because they didn't expect the booming popularity as the Internet at large became the social center for users as opposed to ISP chat centers. CompuServe didn't expect its customers to switch, even though more ISPs were providing more access numbers and better connectivity. Even though AOL didn't have all of the features of CompuServe, they didn't expect for users to not care about that. When AIM was released by AOL for non-subscribers, it was pretty much all over for CompuServe. Its own users were downloading AIM, finding out they could connect to anyone regardless of their ISP, and promptly switching to the lowest price service.
Had CompuServe execs recognized and reacted to new trends more quickly, and had it "expected the unexpected" of users valuing price more than features and matched AOL prices...we'd probably be using CSIM these days instead of AIM.
And yes, there was a CSIM that worked on the AIM protocol.
<misses her CompuServe Classic account>
PS: Part of the reason that CompuServe may have been slow to change its prices was due to its contracts with various third-party services it connected to. For example, a company which had a game connected to CompuServe didn't charge CompuServe's customers directly. Instead, they had a contract with various ISPs that the ISP would pay the company $/hr for each connected user. In return, the ISP would charge their customer an hourly rate for connecting to that service. But these were all contracts. So for example, when CompuServe went from charging $2/hr to connect to a game to flat-rate, it still had to pay the game company $1.75/hr or whatever the contract stipulated. Because of this failure to take into account future unexpected change of prices into their contracts, CompuServe crippled its own ability to match competitor prices without taking a loss elsewhere.
un·ex·pect·ed
–adjective not expected; unforeseen; surprising.
The phrase "expect the unexpected" can be interpreted in two ways.
1. You have an event E which has different outcomes each with different possibilities of happening. There is a finite number of outcomes, given that all inputs into event E are known. For example, if you have two slices of bread, lettuce, bacon and tomato, you know that there is a probability of outcome O that when those ingredients come together, you are going to have a BLT sandwich. Within that outcome O, maybe there are different probabilities - what order the bacon, lettuce and tomato (O1, O2, O3...) are stacked within the two slices of bread, and what ratio of ingredients is used, etc. You may have leftover ingredients, or you may use them all. Or there may be outcome P where you don't use the tomato with all of its assorted child outcomes, outcome Q where you don't use lettuce, etc, outcome R where you don't use bacon, etc, outcome S where you only use 1 slice of bread, etc, outcome T where you use no slices of bread, etc. And each of these outcomes have different probabilities based on what you *know* about the event. Perhaps you *know* the person with these ingredients doesn't like tomato and they looove bacon, so outcome P and its derivatives may have a higher probability than O, Q, S, T, etc, where you would think R would have the least chance of happening.
The phrase "expect the unexpected" in this case of finite number of outcomes is where you say, okay, yes, P is likely and R is unlikely, and it is unexpected that R would happen...but unexpected does not mean unknown as the OP implies. It just means "not expected", as in, you did not expect it to happen. Or surprising for the same. "Unforeseen" just means you don't know what's going to happen, not that you don't know the likelihood of what's going to happen.
2. We could also have an event E which has infinite (or approaching infinite) number of outcomes, where it isn't possible for you to really know all possible outcomes like the example above. This is usually in cases where you don't know all of the inputs into an event, and sometimes in cases where you don't know the process through which an event works. In normal sense, this is something we would consider for large and complex systems of events, such as the the weather, geological activity and the economy. Is it possible to predict the outcomes in these systems? Yes, usually by breaking down large events into a lot of small ones, trying to figure out how the small ones are going to work, and then seeing what cancels out to get you a final outcome. And sometimes, there may be a limited number of final outcomes (prices will rise, prices will fall, prices will remain about the same), and instead the infinite number of ways they could come about.
Like above, there's going to be probabilities of certain outcomes and the way those outcomes happen, and some outcomes are going to be a great deal more likely than others. But unlike the first example, there's also a large number of things you just don't know. You do not have all of the information available, such as all of the inputs and all of the factors that influence an outcome. And this is where this phrase comes in. You "expect the unexpected" by acknowledging that something can happen that you can't predict, and part of "expecting the unexpected" is recognizing it and reacting to it.
Let me use an example that I rarely get to use because it rarely fits into anything I'm talking about, and actually, I could think of a better analogy but I want to use this one.
In the early 90s, there was basically one major ISP - CompuServe. It had a million users, which was far, far, far more than anyone else out there had. Prodigy was it's biggest competitor, followed by GEnie and a few smaller ISPs like AOL - but CompuServe had the most features, more connectivity and reliability, and what-have-you. Back then, the Internet as a place for people to come together and meet mostly existed within the internal ISP chatrooms. It was a lot harder (and more expensive) to get hosting - there certainly weren't any free hosts around then, or Facebooks or Myspaces for networking. There were BBSes and Usenet, but that was for the more savvy users. And there was no AIM, MSN or ICQ. If you were going to talk to someone, it was going to most likely be in an internal chat room. So a lot of subscriptions came from referrals - people referred their friends on to a certain ISP so that they could more easily communicate with them. Some people had multiple services. And CompuServe went further than any other ISP by creating "topic forums" - which were chat rooms with attached message boards and filing sharing, which were run by volunteer community moderators and CompuServe SysOps. This was an unparalleled kind of customization and personalization available. A lot of companies (especially hardware and software) had forums to provide customer service for their users. People would join forums based on interest, and communities would build, and by 1995 CompuServe had a whopping 3 million users still paying hourly rates.
So why is CompuServe dead today? It exhibited a lot of customer-unfriendly corporate behavior. SysOps were notorious for ignoring forum creation requests, as were higher management within the company. As CompuServe's user base grew, interests diverged, and more users wanted more forums available. However, CompuServe would either ignore requests, or make forums that their own management wanted. Another thing was pricing. In 1996, AOL went flat-rate at $19.99. CompuServe responded by going flat-rate at $24.95, but not until 1997. Why didn't they match the rate immediately? Because they didn't expect the booming popularity as the Internet at large became the social center for users as opposed to ISP chat centers. CompuServe didn't expect its customers to switch, even though more ISPs were providing more access numbers and better connectivity. Even though AOL didn't have all of the features of CompuServe, they didn't expect for users to not care about that. When AIM was released by AOL for non-subscribers, it was pretty much all over for CompuServe. Its own users were downloading AIM, finding out they could connect to anyone regardless of their ISP, and promptly switching to the lowest price service.
Had CompuServe execs recognized and reacted to new trends more quickly, and had it "expected the unexpected" of users valuing price more than features and matched AOL prices...we'd probably be using CSIM these days instead of AIM.
And yes, there was a CSIM that worked on the AIM protocol.
<misses her CompuServe Classic account>
PS: Part of the reason that CompuServe may have been slow to change its prices was due to its contracts with various third-party services it connected to. For example, a company which had a game connected to CompuServe didn't charge CompuServe's customers directly. Instead, they had a contract with various ISPs that the ISP would pay the company $/hr for each connected user. In return, the ISP would charge their customer an hourly rate for connecting to that service. But these were all contracts. So for example, when CompuServe went from charging $2/hr to connect to a game to flat-rate, it still had to pay the game company $1.75/hr or whatever the contract stipulated. Because of this failure to take into account future unexpected change of prices into their contracts, CompuServe crippled its own ability to match competitor prices without taking a loss elsewhere.
Edited by Casilla, 19 July 2010 - 08:43 PM.
#60
jcrdude
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- 7001 posts
Oh shit there's a thing here
Posted 20 July 2010 - 10:36 AM
WALL OF TEXT
I like you more now
In example A, should I expect that it is possible for an explosive mounted under the counter goes off beneath the counter while the sandwich is being made, or simply expect that something that bizarre may happen eventually?
#61
Casilla
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Posted 20 July 2010 - 03:32 PM
I like you more now
In example A, should I expect that it is possible for an explosive mounted under the counter goes off beneath the counter while the sandwich is being made, or simply expect that something that bizarre may happen eventually?
In example A, you would have to know that there is an explosive mounted under the counter. It would be considered one of your inputs. If you don't know that it is there, then you are looking at the second example, where you do not know all inputs, or the processes the event uses to transform input into output.
#62
jcrdude
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- 7001 posts
Oh shit there's a thing here
Posted 20 July 2010 - 05:08 PM
I really just wanted to introduce an explosive element to the sandwich example. It makes it more interesting than it already was.
I actually want to run some random tests on what would happen if we were to randomly make a sandwich with 0-10 pieces of bread, 0-10 pieces of lettuce, 0-10 pieces of bacon, and 0-10 pieces of lettuce, then arranged in a random order..... to see how many resemble sandwiches. Then we breed the ones that look the most like a sandwich to try to genetically engineer the perfect sandwich..... MUWAHAHAHA
I actually want to run some random tests on what would happen if we were to randomly make a sandwich with 0-10 pieces of bread, 0-10 pieces of lettuce, 0-10 pieces of bacon, and 0-10 pieces of lettuce, then arranged in a random order..... to see how many resemble sandwiches. Then we breed the ones that look the most like a sandwich to try to genetically engineer the perfect sandwich..... MUWAHAHAHA
#63
harrypotter1
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Posted 21 July 2010 - 01:37 PM
you can expect the unexpected, by preparing yourself in every possible way to prepare yourself for the unexpected.
and for the second one, i have no idea.
and for the second one, i have no idea.
#64
Sweeney
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- 1230 posts
Posted 21 July 2010 - 02:28 PM
you can expect the unexpected, by preparing yourself in every possible way to prepare yourself for the unexpected.
and for the second one, i have no idea.
You didn't even attempt to address the apparent paradox, you just paraphrased the original statement.Why bother?
#67
harrypotter1
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Posted 22 July 2010 - 05:27 AM
Actually I think that's you because you don't seem to have the intelligence to realize why I'm even posting in the first place. 
Edited by harrypotter1, 22 July 2010 - 05:27 AM.
#68
Bryan
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- 4107 posts
Posted 22 July 2010 - 12:42 PM
You think reworded statements that are in the topic title make it seem like you're not making useless posts? Pretty sure that makes you fucking retarded.Actually I think that's you because you don't seem to have the intelligence to realize why I'm even posting in the first place.
#70
jcrdude
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- 7001 posts
Oh shit there's a thing here
Posted 22 July 2010 - 06:00 PM
You guys are so much meaner than I remember.
Well aren't you just a fucking ray of sunshine?
..........sorry, that was the best insult I could come up with :c
#71
emerkeng
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- 561 posts
Posted 22 July 2010 - 08:37 PM
Well aren't you just a fucking ray of sunshine?
..........sorry, that was the best insult I could come up with :c
I just realized if you expected the unexpected it wouldn't be the unexpected anymore
so no you can not expect the unexpected. #72
Casilla
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Posted 23 July 2010 - 01:18 AM
I just realized if you expected the unexpected it wouldn't be the unexpected anymore
Yo, read the OP.
#73
Sweeney
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- 1230 posts
Posted 23 July 2010 - 02:20 AM
He's been in this thread before. It's like trying to batter down a brick wall with a sponge.Yo, read the OP.
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