Quotes About Improbability

The sheer improbability of your existence took my breath away.

The combination of circumstances which allows it to exist at all are so implausible that Schistostega is rendered much more precious than gold.... It's life, and ours, exist only because of a myriad of synchronicities that bring us to this particular place at this particular moment. In return for such a gift, the only sane response is to glitter in reply.

Old age and death were as wild and improbable as some drunken story about walking across the face of a star.

Absurdly improbable things are quite as liable to happen in real life as in weak literature.

But at the same time I recalled something Holmes had said to me many times, namely that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Since only a narrow range of the allowed values for, say, the fine structure constant will permit observers to exist in the Universe, we must find ourselves in the narrow range of possibilities which permit them, no matter how improbable they are. We must ask for the conditional probability of observing constants to take particular ranges, given that other features of the Universe, like its age, satisfy necessary conditions for life.

The reason is simply the extreme improbability of the preadaptations necessary for it to occur at all. Each of these evolutionary steps has been a full-blown adaptation in its own right.

wherever the strength of a faith steps decisively into the foreground, we infer a certain weakness in its ability to demonstrate its truth, even the improbability of what it believes. We, too, do not deny that the belief "makes blessed," but for that very reason we deny that the belief proves something—a strong belief which confers blessedness creates doubts about what it has faith in. It does not ground "truth." It grounds a certain probability— delusion.

Reality is not always probable, or likely.

I am always slightly mystified by the whole 'Snow White' story. What are the chances of coming across that many diminutive men living in one house in the woods?

It's far easier to brush off death if the death in question seems impossible or improbable as a personal threat.

Without knowing how to calculate the odds on such matters, it seems improbably to me that God would have whispered the meaning of my life into the ear of some guru or authority.

Also I didn't have 20/20 vision which you needed to be a pilot. But I said you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.

He said that it was very difficult to become an astronaut. I said that I knew. You had to become an officer in the air force and you had to take lots of orders and be prepared to kill other human beings, and I couldn't take orders. Also I didn't have 20/20 vision, which you needed to be a pilot. But I said that you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.

when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? (The Sign of the Four, page 111)

Nassim Taleb, a statistician, risk analyst, and author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, calls it the "Lucretius Problem." Named

starts upon the supposition that when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. It

process, said I, starts upon the supposition that when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. It may well be that several explanations remain, in which case one tries test after test until one or other of them has a convincing amount of support.

Cuando has eliminado lo imposible, lo que queda, por muy improbable que parezca, tiene que ser la verdad.

You will not apply my precept, he said, shaking his head. How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? We know that he did not come through the door, the window, or the chimney. We also know that he could not have been concealed in the room, as there is no concealment possible. When, then, did he come? Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four

We know the dance moves. You agree to become a patient, and I, the clinician, agree to try to fix you, whatever the improbability, the misery, the damage, or the cost. With this new way, in which we together try to figure out how to face mortality and preserve the fiber of a meaningful life, with its loyalties and individuality, we are plodding novices. We are going through a societal learning curve, one person

All life is preoccupied with death. Death is the only certain future. Yet in the face of reason, everyone holds out hope for the highly improbable.

When we come to see the superlatively extreme precariousness of our existence, and begin to understand how by any accounting, we ought not to exist, what are we to think or feel? Our existence seems to be not merely a virtually impossible miracle but the most outrageous miracle conceivable, one that makes previously amazing miracles seem like almost nothing. It's

Your chances of winning the Powerball lottery are far better than finding a hash collision. After all, lotteries often have actual winners. The probability of a hash collision is more like a lottery that has been running since prehistoric times and has never had a winner and will probably not have a winner for billions of years.