Borel's Law

Borel's law was named after mathematician Émile Borel, who would probably be horrified for this misappropiation; it states:

“”Phenomena with very low probabilities do not occur.

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The corrupted creationist version is:

“”Any odds beyond 1 in 10^50 have a zero probability of ever happening.

—Karl Crawford (ksjj)[1]

Original meaning

It was intended as a rule of thumb for specific scenarios before they happen. Borel introduced it in a book written for non-scientists, as an example of the kind of logic that any scientist might use to generate estimates of the minimum probability below which events of a particular type are considered negligible.[1] It was created for specific physical examples, not as a universal law. It certainly does not mean that any probability below 1 in 10⁵⁰ is automatically zero, which is contradictory.

So, of course, this rule is often cited by creationists as evidence against evolution and abiogenesis when they are misunderstanding that improbable things happen. They appear to be the only people to give it the status of a "law." This is a staggering misrepresentation of what Borel said and one can only feel sympathy for him for having such a misguided "law" named after him.

Borel's actual law

Borel also has a real law named after him, usually known as Borel's law of large numbers. It can be expressed in many ways, but in its simplest form, if an event occurs times in trials, than the probability of occurring is:

Another Borel theorem

A very powerful theorem Borel did prove is given to show his eminence[2]: Taylor Series can be problematic, but Borel proved that every Power Series is the Taylor Series of some function. Very powerful indeed.

Just browsing Wikipedia turns up a number of Borel's theorems and that can at least be used as an indicator of how important a mathematician he was.[note 1]

In remembrance of Usenet

See the main article on this topic: Usenet

Borel's "law" was often invoked in discussions in talk.origins, alt.atheism and other groups which seemed to attract more preachers than atheists or biologists. One answer to a Young Earth Creationist claiming evolution to be impossible — said creationist did not distinguish between a priori and a posterori, which can hardly be a problem for the gentle readers of RationalWiki — is worth paraphrasing: In order for you to exist, your parents had to have sex exactly at a given time. One particular sperm cell had to fertilize one particular egg. Taking this back only a few generations we quickly reach the limit of Borel's "law". You, Sir, are therefore impossible.

Notes

1. Anyone who has some of the most important things in Measure Theory named after him is a grandmaster of abstract thinking, as generations of puzzled students will tell you.

References

1. Borel's law — talk.origins
2. Mathematicians have been heard mentioning this with awe.