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by function_seven 2455 days ago
> But if you ran a contest for someone to do it then you take the act of someone completing the challenge as proof they cheated in order to do so.

That's exactly what I would do. If I provided the coin, and someone flipped 1,000 heads in a row, then they either figured out how to control the outcome of those coin flips, or they swapped coins. There's no chance they accidentally flipped 1000 heads in a row.

1/(10^100)^3 is === 0 for everything we make judgements on in life. If every single atom in the universe (about 10^100) were to do these flips for 15 billion years (about 10^19 seconds), we would not expect to see 1,000 heads in a row, never mind your lifetime. That's how vanishingly small the odds are!

You are far, far more likely to win a lottery jackpot (about 1 in 10^9) every single time you play the game, for the rest of your life, than you would be to flip 1,000 heads in a row. But if there was such a person, we'd know for certain they were rigging the game, right?

Any other explanation is going to be overwhelmingly likely against those odds.