The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.
Genes work with probabilities; they don’t work with certainties. So most things that you’re looking at with these genetic tests, it’s not like you’re condemned to automatically get the disease or the syndrome. There’s a lot of factors in play there.
I don’t believe in providence and fate, as a technologist I am used to reckoning with the formulae of probability.
We think that life develops spontaneously on Earth, so it must be possible for life to develop on suitable planets elsewhere in the universe. But we don’t know the probability that a planet develops life.
If you have the feeling of choice, if you feel free, you will be better off. And when I say better off I mean that if people feel they have control over their lives, they call in for fewer sick days from work. They have a lesser probability of having a heart attack or stroke. They live longer. They’re happier.
I have found, unfortunately, that if I take on too many projects at one time, there is a higher probability of those projects sucking.
Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that. The Titanic saved lives because we’re building bigger and bigger ships. So these people died, but we have effectively improved the safety of the system, and nothing failed in vain.
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
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