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Bayesian Hubris v. Mercy Seat 11A

“Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, who miraculously walked away
from the Ahmedabad disaster, in which more than 240 people
were killed” —The Daily Telegraph on Air India Flight 171 crash

Bayesian inference: a method of statistical inference … used to
calculate a probability of a hypothesis, given prior evidence.

It wasn’t meant to be this way: Good God,
No! For probabilities—all were weighed;
Title, for extra measure, made the point:
Ship-shape, unsinkable, whatsoever played—

‘The Bayesian’ would stay afloat, like Noah’s
Arc once before, though, given a moment’s thought,
There’s one key difference between that boat then
And one that the billionaire Mike Lynch bought:

One, perhaps, that no-one much calculates
In the run of life’s storms, typhoons, upsets,
Which wicked men and women call their fate,
But wiser sorts see more as settling debts.

How terrible—surprising—going down
When that’s not possible, not in his plan,
Not in that certainty mathematics has:
Did he cry out: ‘Me God I’m only man’

Before the waves swept over, and he drowned?
For certainly, He brings destruction to
The proud, but to the humble something else;
For what’s impossible for others, He can do:

The flight took off: from India, One-Seven-One,
So many souls—as engine power failed—
Hurled to the ground with fifty gallons fuelled,
Pummelled to pieces or barbecue-grilled.

No hope, no expectation to see light
Or living ever more, the media said,
(Conclusive as they are, pretend to be)
As flames flared up, who’d gainsay what they’d said?

But then again, there’s fate; there’s destiny,
Another thing: who knew there’d be a seat
Of mercy, 11A, in which one sat,
As flames flared up in metal melting heat—

Like Daniel long before enduring wrath
From that great king who ruled the Earth by force;
And in the midst of all the fire—all lost—
To toast and cinders men return of course;

Yet, yet … as Daniel found, One like a Man—
But fiercer far than all the stars that burn—
Appears, and in His aura wraps V.K. Ramesh,
Staggering, living, from that infernal urn.

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James Sale has had over 50 books published, most recently, “Mapping Motivation for Top Performing Teams” (Routledge, 2021). He has been nominated by The Hong Kong Review for the 2022 Pushcart Prize for poetry, has won first prize in The Society of Classical Poets 2017 annual competition, and performed in New York in 2019. He is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. His most recent poetry collection is DoorWay. For more information about the author, and about his Dante project, visit https://englishcantos.home.blog. To subscribe to his brief, free and monthly poetry newsletter, contact him at [email protected]

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19 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    James, I am familiar with Bayesian calculations from my university days. Your poem made me think of the several times I escaped death. One of them was the Pan Am Lockerbie catastrophe. I had a ticket for the plane, but my incoming flight from Moscow had been postponed a couple of hours. When I arrived at the gate in Frankfurt, I was told I had to take a later flight. I am always amazed at how wonderfully you write and adeptly rhyme your poems including enjambment when warranted.

    Reply
    • James Sale

      Thanks Roy for your comments. Regarding the Bayesian, of course, I am referring to the irony of The Bayesian ship owned by Mike Lynch – the billionaire Brit being sued by HP – and the fact that he made his money calculating probability as it were.: the sinking of his ship was so improbable! Really glad you like the rhyme and enjambment!

      Reply
  2. ABB

    Like Roy, I also studied Bayesian networks in college, in a theories of causality class. While the specific concept has become vague, I appreciate this pitting of human attempts to control uncertainty with the ‘mercy seat’ suggesting divine agency beyond calculation. The likening to Daniel and Noah are apt. It’s hard to not believe in destiny after living through something like this, but an even bigger marvel than this event is how such miraculous improbabilities still don’t change the mindset of secular people as they continue to grope for explanatory models.

    Reply
    • James Sale

      Thanks Andrew – you are right: it is an even bigger marvel that people cannot see the improbability of life itself and so deduce what one has to conclude from it. There is a wonderful line from the Sumerian legends that goes like this: “The bright intelligence that perceives and plans, Nudimmud-Ea, saw through it; he sounded the coil of chaos and against it devised the artifice of the universe.” Isn’t that wonderful? He ‘devised the artifice of the universe’? ‘Saw through it … sounded …’ That of course is exactly what the Jewish and Christian God did – does, as everything is sustained by the Word of power.

      Reply
  4. Joseph S. Salemi

    It can also work with evil persons whom we might have preferred to see perish. Adolf Hitler was saved from certain death four times in his life:

    1) Once when he was a soldier in the trenches during World War I, a voice in his head told him get get up and walk away from the place where he was sitting. After he did so, a French artillery shell landed in the spot where he had been, killing everyone in the vicinity.

    2) After the failure of the Munich Putsch in 1923, Hitler was a fugitive in a safe house, hunted by the Bavarian police. He resolved to shoot himself, and had a pistol ready. An older woman who was with him prevailed upon him not to do it, and with many tears and arguments convinced him to surrender instead.

    3) In the late 1930s, when war was imminent, a German worker designed and planted a powerful bomb directly behind the pillar where Hitler was to give a long speech. It was set to explode right in the middle of his harangue and blow him to pieces. Because of a scheduling glitch, Hitler began his speech early, and left the area fifteen minutes before the bomb was set to detonate. It blew up and killed eight persons, and wounded many others.

    4) In 1944, Colonel von Stauffenberg and other German officers planned to kill Hitler with a bomb in a small suitcase placed next to him during a military briefing. By pure chance, the man next to Hitler pushed the suitcase aside and moved it behind a heavy wooden leg of the table. The subsequent explosion killed and wounded serval persons, but Hitler was protected by the wooden table leg and sustained non-fatal injuries only.

    Reply
    • Roy Eugene Peterson

      As an academic with the equivalent of two more MA degrees in history (minus the theses), I remember these well and thinking divine intervention in support of the Chistian allied forces for further historical purposes and for the establishment of the Israeli state.

      Reply
      • Adam Sedia

        I am curious to know how you view Stalin’s USSR as Christian (with FDR as Stalin’s puppet at least in Europe). I do not view that war as having any good outcome.

      • Mike Bryant

        Adam, I think you’re right to question the moral clarity of WWII. No political alliance that includes Stalin can claim to represent God’s Kingdom. If any modern state truly did, the Lord’s Prayer would be unnecessary.

    • James Sale

      Thanks Joe. There is of course the legendary (apocryphal?) fifth example of the devil looking after his own: the tale goes that in September 1918, during the First World War, Private (later Sergeant) Henry Tandey, a British soldier of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, allegedly encountered a wounded German soldier in his rifle sights near Marcoing, France. Tandey, already renowned for his bravery and later awarded the Victoria Cross, is said to have spared the man out of pity. That man, according to the legend, was Adolf Hitler. Hitler himself passed on the story to the Prime Minister of Britain, Chamberlain in 1938, but historians generally cast doubt on its accuracy.

      Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        The story is definitely apocryphal. Hitler was wounded twice in the war — once in 1916 by a shell fragment, and later in October 1918 by a poison gas attack that temporarily blinded him. If he had been wounded in September of 1918, he would never have been back on active duty a month later.

  5. Brian Yapko

    James, this is a compelling poem which marvelously balances an intense narrative with a mystical sensibility. The story is an amazing one and it is a wonderful thing that you have immortalized it in verse. I especially like the comparison to Daniel and have little doubt that Mr. Ramesh has been spared for something remarkable. My first thoughts go to Lloyd Douglas’s “Magnificent Obsession.”

    Reply
  6. James Sale

    Thanks Brian – as always with you, a highly perceptive reading: yes, it is a material narrative interpreted through a mystical sensibility. Let’s hope that VK Ramesh has been reserved for something great; he’ll have a lot to process – including the death of his own brother – before, perhaps, his calling emerges. It’s a terrible tragedy, no doubt about it, but so often in life, it is the truly awful that produces the truly good. I guess the Crucifixion is the emblem of it. I haven’t read the Magnficent Obsession but I know the plot – good call!

    Reply
  7. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    James, you have captured every thought swirling around my head about this “infernal urn” (perfect poetic term) and the miraculous event that took place, and your words have taken my breath away. Thank you!

    Reply
    • James Sale

      Thanks Susan – the word ‘urn’ of course will always be associated with John Keats -but it is good to appropriate it from time to time! Glad you liked it.

      Reply
  8. Adam Sedia

    You chose an interesting subject for this poem, one that’s been memory-holed. I had to look it up and was frankly astounded by the story. It definitely merits a poem. This one is less music than some of your other shorter works, and rightly so. You are presenting us with an argument. But you elevate it with your Biblical allusions and your envisioning of the supernatural in the event (with appropriate criticism of those who refuse to).

    Reply
    • James Sale

      Thanks Adam – memory-holed is a lovely expression; it was of course the Titaness of Memory, Mnemosyne, who mated with Zeus/Apollo to spawn the 9 Muses, so inviting the memory is exactly what we poets should be doing – poetry depends on time. Glad you like those Biblical allusions. I have recently had a book out on Greek Myths, Gods, Heroes and Us, and I am hoping to do one on the Bible, and come the Fall I shall probably seek out an American publishing house.

      Reply

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