Quotes About Probability

If you are in banking and lending, surprise outcomes are likely to be negative for you.

In an infinite universe, all things are not only possible but, no matter how improbable, certain to exist somewhere at some time.

The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara.

I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.

There is no reason to regard God as immune from consideration along the spectrum of probabilities. And there is certainly no reason to suppose that, just because God can be neither proved nor disproved, his probability of existence is 50 per cent.

Chance is just a word expressing ignorance

We're going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.

O darwinismo é uma teoria de processos cumulativos tão lentos que se desenrolam ao longo de milhares e milhões de anos. Todos os nossos juízos intuitivos sobre o que é provável mostram-se errados por larga margem.

One way to express the answer is that it might happen by 'chance'. But 'chance' is just a word expressing ignorance. It means 'determined by some as yet unknown, or unspecified, means'.

And some scientists and other intellectuals are convinced—too eagerly in my view—that the question of God's existence belongs in the forever inaccessible PAP category. From this, as we shall see, they often make the illogical deduction that the hypothesis of God's existence, and the hypothesis of his non-existence, have exactly equal probability of being right.

Turns' and 'fairness' simply don't come into it. We may care about fairness and unfairness, but coins don't give a toss!

Just by chance, you could happen to give all your mother's versions to your child, and none of your father's. In this case, your father would have given no DNA to his grandchild. Of course such a scenario is highly unlikely, but as we go down to more distant descendants, total non-contribution of DNA becomes more possible.

However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747.

An active replicator is any replicator whose nature has some influence over its probability of being copied. For example a DNA molecule, via protein synthesis, exerts phenotypic effects which influence whether it is copied: this is what natural selection is all about.

A passive replicator is a replicator whose nature has no influence over its probability of being copied.

What matters is not whether God is disprovable (he isn't) but whether his existence is probable. That is another matter.

If you are trying to explain something improbable, it can never suffice to invoke an entity that is, in itself, at least as improbable.

We are uneasily aware that a similar catastrophe[, that of an immense meteorite or comet hitting the earth and causing massive global extinction,] could hit us at any moment... [T]he odds that it will happen in some unfortunate individual's lifetime are near certainty... And the unfortunate individuals concerned will probably not be human, for statistical likelihood is that we shall be extinct before that anyway.

That you cannot prove God's non-existence is accepted and trivial, if only in the sense that we can never absolutely prove the non-existence of anything. What matters is not whether God is disprovable (he isn't) but whether his existence is probable. That is another matter.

But the whole point of Hamilton's argument is that the distinction between family and non-family is not hard and fast, but a matter of mathematical probability.

If the odds of life originating spontaneously on a planet were a billion to one against, nevertheless that stupefyingly improbable event would still happen on a billion planets.

An astronomically overwhelming majority of the people who could be born never will be. You are one of a tiny minority whose number came up. Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one.

However small the minority of planets with just the right conditions for life may be, we necessarily have to be on one of that minority, because here we are thinking about it.