Well, I hate to lose a new strain so I would have probably done as your partner suggested and flowered a few cuttings just to make sure. Another factor to consider is that the seed bank does fuck up every now and then (human error), I've only ordered seeds about 5 times and once I received a ten pack of seeds that were an entirely different strain than what I chose! That's some pretty bad luck and I'd imagine very unlikely. I do agree with your thought process, I just would have gone an extra step and put a few of it's cuttings under 12/12 and watched them like a hawk...Great video. I often bring up the concept of large numbers in real life because I find most people misunderstand them. This video taught me that I misunderstand them a bit myself.
I had a plant hermie on me last year. It was a new strain and the only plant to hermie in the entire garden, and it shared a res with a different strain that did just fine. It was an early hermie, all factors were in check, there was no obvious stress, and when I sprayed it with reverse it barely helped. I determined that this was a true hermie and killed it off as well as it's cuttings.
My partner was livid at losing the strain. He swears the plant was just stressed and the cuttings would be fine. When I list all the evidence suggesting it was a true hermie, the only thing he counters with is a number he heard in a video. Female seeds have 1/1000 chance of producing a hermie. In his mind, this makes it impossible. I told him to consider that attitude sends out thousands of seeds each month. If 1/1000 is hermie, then for every 10,000 seeds, 10 hermies get sent out. Pretty small chance, but far from impossible.
Now I may be wrong about the plant, but that is beside the point. I am citing evidence and he completely discounts it's all based on probability. I am going by the principal that, once you eliminate all other possibilities, the remaining possibility must be true, no matter how improbable. I ruled out all the things that can cause a hermie and consider the other plants a control group. I consider a test to be when I sprayed it with reverse, and it behaved exactly as a hermie plant is expected to. (reverse corrects male flowers on female plants, does not help a true hermie) Of course I can not account for the hidden information I am not privy to, but I think this is sufficient evidence to stand against the probability factor.
This seems to be another way in which misunderstanding large numbers hinders people's perception, even a critical thinker who doesn't believe in the paranormal. What do you guys think?
LMAO! You failed to mention your feelings toward the plant
If he knows you well, your partner may have sensed your underlying hatred toward his new lady and some of his passionate reaction may have been a response to a possible agenda beyond your given reasons. By the by, what strain was it?
It was GHS silver haze, but I don't blame green house. I think it is the nature of botany some seeds will be duds. I had a bad experience with Barney's LSD. It didn't hermie, it just turned out to be a really shitty plant. Shitty taste, shitty yield, shitty buzz, yet it is a strain with high praise so I assume it was just a bad genetic expression. The experience was so bad though that I will not be trying it again.LMAO! You failed to mention your feelings toward the plant
Yep. I've had the same experience and got to see these different genetic expressions of the same plant: my current favorite strain, Vanilla Kush (also from Barney's) expressed itself both ways. I bought a ten pack of these feminized seeds last year; one seed was a dud and didn't even sprout, and two other plants were just poor performer's (runty, produced less bud with sub-par resin production, and it tasted nasty). The other seven plants were fucking AMAZING producers in both quality and quantity, and I still have 3 ozs left in my personal stash that I refuse to part with. I wish I kept mothers back then, I will really miss her when she's gone. My custies still ask about her