But after you figure the % of black men who make such posts per day (.00001%?), .
I'm going to have to ignore your math because:
1) It looks to me like you're pulling the numbers out of your ass.
They are reasonable and perhaps overly generous estimations of the relative frequencies of these events. They mean that every day, 1 in every 10 million black men post that they are going to go out and get shot, and 1 in 10 million black men get shot without doing anything to trigger the shooting. IOW, given that their are about 15 million black men (not counting pre-teens), it allows for each event happening to/by a black man in the US every single day. But even if we make those events 10 times more likely, the combined probability is still 1 in a trillion.
Not to mention, such an explanation also requires that his known mental illness also be purely coincidence. He not merely joked like any normal sane person would do, and got shot via no fault of his own like any normal person could do, but he also just happened to be mentally ill even though it played no role in those events. In contrast, the explanation that his post and the shooting are connected by intent to create a situation where he was likely to get shot, logically coheres with the fact of his mental problems.
2) It kinda reminds me of creationists trying to disprove evolution by throwing out numbers as if long shots NEVER come in.
What is should remind you of is the most foundational principle of all rational thought. which is that when inferring the cause of an event, the relative probabilities of competing explanations should determine which explanation you favor for that particular event. If your friend says that he had sex with your mom last night while your dad watched, then (unless your parents are dead) the odds of this are not zero. Yet you are pretty stupid if you think that this is what happened rather than the much greater odds that he is pulling your leg.
3) The actual odds don't matter unless you can show that there's ZERO chance he was trying to be funny.
That is like saying that the odds that you will die if you jump off a cliff do not matter, unless you can show there is ZERO chance you will live.
It is not a question of whether the odds of him joking are zero, but that they are extremely low relative to other much more probable explanations for the co-occurrence. The odds not being zero only mean that given enough time, someday somewhere some black guy will get shot after joking that he will get shot. The actual question at hand is whether this particular guy got shot right after purely joking about it, versus the odds that his known mental problems were a common cause of both his post and his getting shot. Are they
My point was that people are treating the statement as meaning ONLY an intention to attack the cops while in costume and get shot. However small you want to make the odds that it was all a coincidence, it's still not going to be zero.
Correct that the odds are not zero, but the odds will are millions of times less than the odds that he was serious and was stating intent and that the post and the shooting co-occurred due to common influence by his known mental illness. The question is, based upon what we know is it reasonable to think he was just joking and that his shooting was a coincidence? No, it is highly irrational because of the presences of a obvious and much more probable explanation. Is it "possible" that he was joking, sure in the same way that it is "possible" that if do a handstand while picking your lottery numbers that you will win today. But the reasonable person realizes that it is so improbable that he doesn't bother standing on his head (or even playing the lottery to begin with).
The extreme difference in probabilities mean that "it was just a joke, and then he got shot" is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence to overtake the more more likely explanation that his words conveyed intent, which is what every reasonable person would at least tentatively conclude until such extraordinary evidence shows otherwise.
