wandelaar

The table in the book contains calculated probabilities, so the number 16,777,216 is not the sample size. See:

Crucial in the whole procedure are the repeated divisions of the heap of stalks. That is where the randomness comes in. Now the probabilities of the possible divisions of the heap of stalks may be slightly different in the book and in the computer program. That would then explain the difference. How long do you think it would take a fast computer to run the program?

Well - I have had some bad experiences on the internet myself. So you have to be careful about what you reveal. But revealing that you don't know everything is harmless, because nobody knows everything.

I don't see why cosmic4z (or anybody else) should "feel vulnerable and unsure" by publicly recognizing the limits of his/her knowledge. It is rather the other way around, you actually become vulnerable by claiming to posses knowledge that you don't have.

There is a saying (I think by Confucius) that only the very wise and the very stupid never change their opinion. I think it is wise to always leave open the possibility that you may have it wrong on some points. Posing as Mr. Know It All will only impress the ignorant.

OK - A happy one.

Yes - its the heavy end of the spectrum. The first one has some dark beauty to it. Sometimes I listen to that kind of music because it makes daily life look like paradise in comparison.

To compare with the theoretical value of the book we need the number in the red circle (if I understand correctly):

If that is the least probable outcome than the unhappy conclusion of all this is that we do indeed need to throw 1,000,000,000 or more hexagrams to get a good impression of the probabilities of all the hexagrams. And that would make the method impractical because it would take many hours (as I understand it did) to run the program. Am I correct?

Could you explain your last post? What are you calculating there?

What's Taoist about that? Not much I guess, too much over the top. But on the other hand those guys were masters in "the art of hard rock". They could have appeared in a story by Chuang tzu had he lived today. I have no talent to play music myself, but in my younger years I used every weekend to dance like a madman on music like this. Just letting my self go with the flow of the music made me forget the rest of the week. Don't need that now, but I sure did then! But as they say Taoism is mainly for old men (and women).

Now according to the law of large numbers the relative frequencies of the found hexagrams are expected to approximate the theoretical probabilities of the hexagrams in a way similar to this: Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers#/media/File:Lawoflargenumbers.svg Some of the theoretical probabilities of hexagrams can be found here: It is interesting to see whether the relative frequencies found with the computer program are the same as the theoretical probabilities in the book. If that is so than the next question is: what is the minimal number of iterations necessary to get relative frequencies that correspond with the theoretical probabilities.

I do so in some measure, for instance as regards the I Ching. But there are limits to the available time and energy one has to explore things that on the basis of ones current understanding seem highly unlikely to be of value. Not saying that using the I Ching is without value, just saying that I consider it unlikely that some paranormal process is involved. Nevertheless I am investing some time and energy in researching the thing, with the great help of Lost in Translation. One can take on some side project from time to time. But one cannot research everything! Can you? And as Taoism is a world in itself, that surely applies to Taoism.

It is correct that philosophical Taoism disapproves of part of the cake as being not to its own liking. And as the whole cake contains some rather strange bits and pieces I personally don't like to eat it all. I am not a believer, and I am not taking anything on faith. For me there is no reason to think the original Taoists were absolutely right on all points. So I don't feel the need to eat the whole cake without first inspecting the ingredients of the doubtful parts. But how one acts in this matter is for each of us to decide, there is a place for all forms of Taoism. Also in Buddhism we see later developments that concentrate on certain aspects of the original form to develop into something new. Such as Zen or Tibetan Buddhism. But it would be a silly debate on words to disqualify Zen and Tibetan Buddhism for not being real Buddhism because of not being true to the original form of Buddhism. Things change and develop, and so do religions and philosophies.

According to the law of large numbers we would expect the clearly winning hexagrams to disappear as the relative frequencies of all hexagrams approach their specific (pure chance) probability in the case of extremely many iterations. Great experiment!

Chad Hansen is very rational in his approach to Taoism. That's what I like about him. Rational thought is perfectly capable of exploring its own boundaries, and when you do that and recognize those boundaries, there is no problem in using rational thought where it does apply. Of course there are other sinologists who criticize him for ignoring the mystical aspects of Taoism, but as I look at those video's I see a man who practices meditation, who appreciates the unity and beauty of nature, who knows about Taoist tactics and who is enlightened in his own way. I don't see why somebody like him should not be called a (philosophical) Taoist.

Just discovered there is also a part 3. Wonderful! Philosophical Taoism at its best.

The idea seems to be that either you accept all of Taoism as it was in it's earliest stages, or else you are not a Taoist at all. I don't see how that position could be defended...

There once was just such a dog in Utrecht (a city in the Netherlands) that used to hang around before a store where most of the Chinese tourists wanted to take pictures of him. Possibly something to do with Taoist aesthetics?

https://www.thestar.com/life/2018/06/24/english-bulldog-zsa-zsa-wins-ugliest-dog-contest.html Source: https://nos.nl/artikel/2238083-maak-kennis-met-zsa-zsa-de-lelijkste-hond-ter-wereld.html

It would also be interesting to see in what manner the appearance of "clearly winning hexagrams" depends on the amount of iterations in case only pure chance is operating (that is: when the results are not used for consultation). That would give us a baseline to compare against.

My first intuitive interpretation was that putting some hard work into further developing the method would open a new channel for the I Ching to deliver its messages. But then I read the Wilhelm-translation about hexagram #21 and thought that maybe the I Ching gives me a warning to stop with this "criminal method". So I am not sure what the hexagram means. But what I do like is that there is a clearly winning hexagram despite the huge amount of iterations.

In what way can the concepts or symbols of yin and yang contribute to an understanding of philosophical Taoism?

Thank you very much! This is getting interesting. A few questions: - How are the random numbers generated: are they really random (for instance derived from noise) or pseudo random? - Do the codes like "212212" represent the hexagrams? - And are the numbers before the codes the number of times of the 5 most frequently found hexagrams in the current run? That should be so according to the law of large numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers But when using a random number generator to throw the I Ching would cause large and consistent deviations from the law of large numbers than that would prove the presence of a paranormal component in this method of throwing.