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It first occurred to me that human intuitions were making a qualitative distinction between "No chance" and "A very tiny chance, but worth keeping track of." You can see this in the OB lottery debate, where someone said, "There's a big difference between zero chance of winning and epsilon chance of winning," and I replied, "No, there's an order-of-epsilon difference; if you doubt this, let epsilon equal one over googolplex."

The problem is that probability theory sometimes lets us calculate a chance which is, indeed, too tiny to be worth the mental space to keep track of it - but by that time, you've already calculated it. People mix up the map with the territory, so that on a gut level, tracking a symbolically described probability feels like "a chance worth keeping track of", even if the referent of the symbolic description is a number so tiny that if it was a dust speck, you couldn't see it. We can use words to describe numbers that small, but not feelings - a feeling that small doesn't exist, doesn't fire enough neurons or release enough neurotransmitters to be felt. This is why people buy lottery tickets - no one can feel the smallness of a probability that small.

But what I found even more fascinating was the qualitative distinction between "certain" and "uncertain" arguments, where if an argument is not certain, you're allowed to ignore it. Like, if the likelihood is zero, then you have to give up the belief, but if the likelihood is one over googol, you're allowed to keep it.

Now it's a free country and no one should put you in jail for illegal reasoning, but if you're going to ignore an argument that says the likelihood is one over googol, why not also ignore an argument that says the likelihood is zero? I mean, as long as you're ignoring the evidence anyway, why is it so much worse to ignore certain evidence than uncertain evidence?

I have often found, in life, that I have learned from other people's nicely blatant bad examples, duly generalized to more subtle cases. In this case, the flip lesson is that, if you can't ignore a likelihood of one over googol because you want to, you can't ignore a likelihood of 0.9 because you want to. It's all the same slippery cliff.

Consider his example if you ever you find yourself thinking, "But you can't prove me wrong." If you're going to ignore a probabilistic counterargument, why not ignore a proof, too?

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Originally posted by Slash_KMC
Bane and Bandon suck. Fact. Though I still see Bandon being superior to Bane.

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Originally posted by akpwnz
Are you trolling? Hard to tell with this thread

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Originally posted by Nephthys
Sidious must have been crappy to get chucked over a railing. Yeah, shit happens....

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Originally posted by Darth Piggott
Darth Sidious was the most powerful Sith Lord the galaxy has ever known. With that being said Darth Nihilus was a wound in the force. He hungered for force energy. If Darth Nihilus and Darth Revan were prepared for the battle in Marko Ragnos's tomb, then Darth Nihilus would absorb all of the force energy on Korriban, including Darth Sidious's and Darth Vader's force energy. Darth Nihilus may not be able to fully control his hunger and he may absorb Darth Revan's force energy as well. But Visas Marr survived his attack on Katarr so maybe Darth Revan could as well.
Now if Darth Sidious and Darth Vader suprised attacked Darth Revan and Nihilus then they might have a chance, but we don't know how much energy Darth Nihilus needs to began feeding on force energy or how long it takes to build up.
If both parties were prepared though I believe the team of Darth Revan and Darth Nihilus would win only because of Darth Nihilus's hunger.

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Originally posted by Darth Angel
Is nihilus even canon anymore? SWTOR treats him like sh*t at least. Anyway, that's just the worst sith lord ever, the guy beats his mortal enemies by "sucking" them to death, how crappy is that

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Originally posted by axel_jovan
I think the bolded part is the key.
You are absolutely right, we have no proper info on how long N.'s drain will take, how much prep time he needs etc.
What if Sidious simply will blitz him?

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Originally posted by Nebaris Is Back
Nihlus Force Auto-kills them. End of battle.

Really, I would have expected more of you to have played Kotor 2. It's not that difficult to figure out based on what we've seen in that game.

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Originally posted by Lord Lucien
What have they said about him in TOR?

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Originally posted by Darth Angel
Absolutely nothing, that's the point. Bioware is making this game as if KOTOR II events had never happened. In fact I don't blame them, that the story doesn't bring anything new or relevant. The galaxy was a mess and with few jedi in the begining of Kotor II, in the end it was still at the same point, and everything happened in the shadows.
Besides, the idea of a sith lord who can kill 1 world with a force drain technique or another guy who reattaches himself after being cut to pieces it's quite sh*tty and not that much Star Wars I must say...