The Dink Network

Something about me...
Well, I was born June 2 1987 which makes me 22 years old at the time of this writing. I first started playing Dink around 2002 and joined the forums in may 2005. Since December 2008 I've been doing the polls here on the Dinknetwork, so if you think a poll is stupid, funny or plain pointless it's probably my fault.

I also released some DMODs here. The first two called Dink learns music and Quest for the gems aren't really that great, but I also released The scourger, a DMOD that I still consider to be my opus magnum.
Progress on new DMODs is going very very slowly though. I still have a DMOD in production called "Terminal Tranquility 1, Paninga". But as mentioned before progress is really slow, so don't count on it being released any time soon.

I've made a development file called "An introduction to DMOD making" which seems to be very popular, be sure to check it out if you're interested in making DMODs yourself!

If you wish to contact me you can do so by posting a private message on the forum, or by emailing to: metatarasal (at) hotmail (dot) com

If you want to read more about me, check out the interview I gave for Dinkerview.

Private Message

What all of you are forgetting is that these chances are only valid if you start out with a certain starting situation and then see what the chance is you'll end up with a certain ending situation. This is not really a valid way of reasoning as from this starting situation you could get multiple ending situations which would all be plausible. So, imagine starting out with a whale and waiting long enough for 2700 important DNA sequence changes to occur then you might end up with a lot of different species, all of whom are valid species. Maybe the chance of it becoming a hyena is only 1/364*10^1625 but it could end up as a lot of different species too. It might end up as something hyena-like, or maybe it grows to be cow-like; maybe it evolves to something seahorse like, or something so alien we wouldn't even be able to describe it. In short: Don't apply chances retroactively, it means you are ignoring other plausible outcomes that could have been.

Let me draw a comparison: What is the chance that someone's parents marrying each other and not someone else? It obviously depends on a lot of factors, but 10% definitely doesn't sound to high for me. Now if my parents wouldn't have met I wouldn't have existed. And I have two sets of grandparents too and the same thing applies to them. So going two generations back (to my grandparents) my chances of existence have shrunk to just 0.1% Now if I were to go back a 100 generations using the same assumptions my chances of existence would be nearly non-existent.

Still, as per Descartes, I exist. But there probably are almost an endless amount of other ways in which a person could exist in my place. If you want to calculate the chance of there being a person at the place where I am you'll also have to include those possible births.

The conclusion: When calculating chances for evolution also include all possible outcomes that do not exist. Your chances of winning the lottery may be only one in a billion, but if a billion people join in on the lottery the chance of someone hitting the jackpot are in fact quite reasonable.