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I can't believe that a brilliant man like Fermi would actually say that. The outcomes of battles are not random events. It's equivalent to saying that Floyd Ma

I can't believe that a brilliant man like Fermi would actually say that. The outcomes of battles are not random events. It's equivalent to saying that Floyd Mayweather, who so far has won 50 out of 50 of his fights, is not a great boxer, because, out of millions of people boxing, there mathematically ought to be one person who just won 50 times in a row. The thing is winning battles (or boxing fights) is not flipping a coin - it involves little more skill than that.

namirez 7y ago
What Fermi is saying is that if 3 out of every 100 generals are great, these 3 should be able to win more than 5 consecutive battles in order to beat the statistical noise. In your example, Mayweather's chance of winning 50 fights by sheer luck is 10^-15. We don't have 10^15 fighters around, so his achievement cannot be attributed to chance.