Hey Vsauce! Michael here. Have you ever wondered how much you have to fuck around to find out something? Well, it depends on what you want to find out and how you define fucking around. But let’s start with a simple example: how many times do you have to flip a coin to find out if it’s fair?

A fair coin is one that has an equal probability of landing on heads or tails. But how can we test that? Well, one way is to flip the coin many times and count how many heads and tails we get. If the coin is fair, we expect the ratio of heads to tails to be close to 1:1. But how close is close enough? And how many flips do we need?

This is where statistics comes in handy. Statistics is the science of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data. It can help us answer questions like: what are the chances that our coin is fair given our observations? How confident are we in our conclusion? How can we reduce our uncertainty?

One way to measure our uncertainty is by using a confidence interval. A confidence interval is a range of values that contains the true value of a parameter with a certain probability. For example, if we flip a coin 100 times and get 60 heads and 40 tails, we can calculate a 95% confidence interval for the probability of getting heads as [0.51, 0.69]. This means that there is a 95% chance that the true probability of getting heads lies somewhere between 0.51 and 0.69.

But wait a minute! That’s a pretty wide range! How can we be more precise? Well, one way is to increase the number of flips. The more flips we do, the narrower our confidence interval becomes. For example, if we flip the coin 1000 times and get 520 heads and 480 tails, our 95% confidence interval becomes [0.48, 0.56]. That’s much better!

But how many flips do we need exactly? Well, that depends on how accurate we want to be and how confident we want to be in our result. There is no definitive answer to this question because it involves trade-offs between time, resources,
and precision.

But let’s say we want to be very confident (99%) and very precise (within +/-0.01) about our estimate of the probability of getting heads from our coin flip experiment. How many flips do we need then?

Well, using some formulas from statistics (which I won’t go into detail here), we can calculate that we need at least **16 640** flips! That’s a lot of fucking around!

But what if flipping coins isn’t your thing? What if you want to find out something more complex or more meaningful? Like whether aliens exist or whether God exists or whether free will exists?

Well then you have entered into another realm of screwing around: philosophy.

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental questions about existence,
knowledge,
values,
reason,
mind,
and language.
It can help us explore topics that are not easily answered by empirical evidence or logical reasoning.

But philosophy also has its limitations.
It often relies on assumptions,
arguments,
and interpretations
that are not universally agreed upon or proven.
It also faces challenges from other fields
such as science,
psychology,
and sociology
that may provide alternative explanations or perspectives
on some philosophical questions.

So how much do you have to fuck around
to find out something in philosophy?
Well…it depends on who you ask
and what you accept as valid sources of knowledge.

Some philosophers may claim
that they have found definitive answers
to some fundamental questions
through rigorous logic
or intuition
or revelation.

Others may argue
that such answers are impossible
or meaningless
or relative.

And others may suggest
that instead of looking for answers,
we should focus on asking better questions

Or maybe…just maybe…
the real answer lies somewhere in between.

And as always…thanks for watching!