The Definition of Sanity is to Continually Repeat an Action and Expect a Different Outcome

I saw a giant rabbit praying the other night, and it quite put me off balance. Then I realised that it was the South Sydney Rugby League mascot waiting for a video referee decision on a try.

I was watching the football match with Smurf and it was a replay for him, but the first viewing for me. (I don’t normally watch football of any description, but it was filling one entire wall of the place we were sitting in. You couldn’t get away.) He mentioned that something was about to happen - and when it did, it didn’t happen quite as he expected.

Now I’ve always been pretty sure that every time you watch a replay of a sporting match, it’s slightly different. Each time the match is observed, particularly with the observer wishing for a different outcome, another parallel universe winks into existence and sets off down its own path. In turn, in each of these side by side universes, the outcome is just a bit different each time it is observed, and so on. With enough viewings, it is possible to reverse the outcome of, say, a football match.

This is proven in the wisdom of the home game advantage. More people are watching and willing the near infinite number of universal probabilities to come down in the favour of the local team. This can be reversed if the away team supporters continually watch replays of the game they lost – but they never do because it’s too disappointing for them.

So the take home message here is: Don’t give up, each time you watch, it gets you closer to the result you want. I promise. Or at least take comfort in the fact that in some parallel universe, the Rabbitohs are winning a Grand Final and Russell Crowe has stopped being such a weirdo about it.

Now we have to harness this power, and really upset some bookmakers.