Quotes About Improbability

Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.

He had about the same life expectancy as a three legged hedgehog on a six lane motorway.

Well, I think, said Nobby, that when you rule out the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, ain't worth hanging around for on a cold night wonderin' about when you could be getting on the outside of a big drink.

If he went over the falls now, he might get to the bottom before they did. That wasn't a good sentence, however he tried it.

Does not happen!

The present is the frailest of improbable constructs. It could have been different. Any part of it, or all of it, could be otherwise.

In matters of the heart, nothing is true except the improbable.

Porque não é possível, pura e simplesmente. É menos possível que encontrar uma agulha numa fábrica de agulhas. É menos possível que encontrar uma estrela solitária no universo. É menos possível que encontrar, entre tantos milhões que existem no mundo, a pessoa que podemos amar.

Nobody ever died of being shot by a cookie

Some things can come to pass, he reminded himself. Some things are improbable, and some are impossible.

The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected of him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable. And this again is possible only because each man is unique, so that with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world. (Human Condition, p. 178) For de Beauvoir, this newness

I know that history is going to be dominated by an improbable event, I just don't know what that event will be.

our world is dominated by the extreme, the unknown, and the very improbable (improbable according our current knowledge)—and all the while we spend our time engaged in small talk, focusing on the known, and the repeated. This

I know that history will be dominated by an improbable event, I just don't know what that event will be.

My idea is that not only are some scientific results useless in real life, because they underestimate the impact of the highly improbable (or lead us to ignore it), but that many of them may be actually creating Black Swans. These

The occurrence of a highly improbable event is the equivalent of the nonoccurrence of a highly probable one

Cuál es la probabilidad de morir en un accidente aéreo?», por ejemplo, las personas aumentan el grado de probabilidad. Sin embargo, Slovic y sus colegas descubrieron, en patrones del mundo de los seguros, que en las pólizas la gente se olvidaba de esos sucesos altamente improbables. Dichos investigadores llaman a este fenómeno «la preferencia por asegurarse contra pequeñas pérdidas probables», a expensas de las menos probables pero de mayor impacto.

Look at the implication for the Black Swan. Extremistan can produce Black Swans, and does, since a few occurrences have had huge influences on history. This is the main idea of this book.

Drogo is obsessed and blinded by the possibility of an unlikely event;

My idea is that not only are some scientific results useless in real life, because they underestimate the impact of the highly improbable (or lead us to ignore it), but that many of them may be actually creating Black Swans.

Later on, I will delve into the mystery of this blurring, to see how it is tied to the strange initial improbability of the universe. For now, I will end with the mind-boggling fact that entropy, as Boltzmann fully understood, is nothing other than the number of microscopic states that our blurred vision of the world fails to distinguish.

Time has lost another of its crucial components: the intrinsic difference between past and future. Boltzmann understood that there is nothing intrinsic about the flowing of time. That it is only the blurred reflection of a mysterious improbability of the universe at a point in the past. The source of Rilke's "eternal current" is nothing other than this.

You're just worried they'll hire a male instructor and he'll be hotter than you." Jace's eyebrows went up. "Hotter than me?" "It could happen," Clary said, "You know, theoretically." "Theoretically the planet could suddenly crack in half, leaving me on one side and you on the other, forever and tragically parted, but I'm not worried about that either. Some things," Jace said, with his customary crooked smile, "are just too unlikely to dwell upon.

A fool or idiot is one who expects things to happen that never can happen.