Quotes About Outcomes

The policies we need to make decisions on should depend far more on the range of possible outcomes than on the expected final number. I

as they think that they will beat the odds.

Options like dispersion of outcomes and don't care about the average too much.

Furthermore, people who make forecasts professionally are often more affected by such impediments than those who don't.

All you need is the wisdom to not do unintelligent things to hurt yourself (some acts of omission) and recognize favorable outcomes when they occur.

Outcomes are paradoxically more stable under the minority rule—the variance of the results is lower and the rule is more likely to emerge independently across separate populations.

I engage in a gambling strategy that has 999 chances in 1,000 of making $ 1 (event A) and 1 chance in 1,000 of losing $ 10,000 (event B), as in Table 6.1. My expectation is a loss of close to $ 9 (obtained by multiplying the probabilities by the corresponding outcomes).

she may have been happier before the Black Swan of her success than after.

Put yourself in situations where favorable consequences are much larger than unfavorable ones.

The policies we need to make decisions on should depend far more on the range of possible outcomes than on the expected final number.

Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance. … Mother Nature does not tell you how many holes there are on the roulette table … In this book, considering that alternative outcomes could have taken place, that the world could have been different, is the core of probabilistic thinking.

The reference point argument is as follows: do not compute odds from the vantage point of the winning gambler (or the lucky Casanova, or the endlessly bouncing back New York City, or the invincible Carthage), but from all those who started in the cohort. Consider

the potential costs are much worse than the cumulative gains.

And also forever too late for Lily to learn that raging passion predicts nothing but a mess of bad news for everybody.

Oh, Mary said, life is mostly just what happens. Choice or chance or fate, gods or not. Like it or not. Things happen, we do what we think is in our best interests or just convenient, and then we live with the consequences.

But probability triumphs in the end. An important theorem known as the law of large numbers tells us that as the number of independent trials increases, the average of the outcomes will get closer and closer to its expected value.

The first edition of this book addressed the seemingly invincible fallacy that statistical disparities in socioeconomic outcomes imply either biased treatment of the less fortunate or genetic deficiencies in the less fortunate.

To suggest that "society" can simply "arrange" better outcomes somehow, without specifying the processes, the costs or the risks, is to ignore the tragic history of the twentieth century, written in the blood of millions, killed in peacetime by their own governments that were given extraordinary powers in the name of lofty goals.

Permaina adalah uraian matrmatis dari hubungan antara strategi-strategi dan kemungkinan hasil-hasilnya.

what looks like a quick fix today may well end up having far-reaching and unintended consequences tomorrow.

All imaginable futures are not equally possible.

These forces are trajectories, not destinies.

Fear clouds our convictions and distorts our discernment. When we fill our minds with negative predictions or allow our thoughts to manipulate us into thinking about all the possible destructive outcomes of our mission, we invite fear to paralyze our progress.

I found it paralyzingly difficult to make even the simplest decisions. So much hung in the balance, so many complicated parameters needed to be taken into consideration, yet always there was too little information, no way to know what outcomes could result. Life was a terrifying, invisible web of consequences. What mayhem might I unknowingly wreak by saying yes when I could have said no, by going east instead of west?