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A 1-in-a-million chance seems quite remote, yet if you are rolling the dice once a millisecond...

This applies to any repeated chance, so it probably doesn't need to be called out again when translating odds to verbal language.




I'm not only talking about repeated events, though. If someone told me about 20 different events that they were almost certain, and one failed to happen, I would doubt their calibration.


19 out of 20 could easily mean they get 119 right out of every 120 “almost certainties” and they just rolled a 1 on a die 6 for the “luck” component.

One off, 1 out of N errors are really hard to interpret, even with clear objective standards.

And emphasizes why mapping regular language to objective meanings is a necessity for anything serious, but can still lead to problematic interactions.

Probability assessments are will almost always sometimes certainly could be considered likely hard!


I think the parent was suggesting a much higher percentage for “almost certain”… like >99.9%




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