2 ms·
There is no probability to know in the sense you mean -- probability is what we call our personal assessment of the situation, incorporating the (little) knowle
by kqr 4y ago
There is no probability to know in the sense you mean -- probability is what we call our personal assessment of the situation, incorporating the (little) knowledge we have.
So sure, there is your probability. Will you make money knowing it? That's the question you're alluding to.
(As a concrete example: there is no "true" probability of rain six days from now. Either it rains or it doesn't. But a skilled meteorologist can give you a probability that would probably make you a little money over the climate average.
Both the climate average and the meteorologist's assessments are correct probabilities. They just reflect different amounts of information.)
- necovek 4y agoI was not referring to discreet outcomes at all (the old joke about everything having a 50% chance: it either happens or it does not). My point is that with the available information when making most life decisions, we usually have no idea at all of even the ballpark chances of something turning one way or another. Basically, the advice from the article is to incorporate luck into your estimations (both good and bad), and to use that to determine if a decision is good or bad, and then only go with good decisions (like a poker player would). And don't stress over bad (or good) outcomes if they were mostly due to really bad luck (i.e. something improbable has happened). But if you don't know if chances of something happening are 10% or 90%, how do you incorporate that into your decision making? What I am saying is that in life, we implicitely work to reduce the range (eg for a romantic partner, get to know them much better), but we've already decided to invest that much time with very slim chances of them turning out to be our lifelong partners.