Probability Quotes - Page 11

• We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Real, Pride, Worry

  Jeffrey Kluger (2007). “Simplexity: the simple rules of a complex world”

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• On moral grounds, I think that if you believe a certain outcome is a very possible outcome, you have an obligation to tell people that. With global warming, the probability of a bad outcome if we stay on our current emission trends is incredibly high. If you know a bad outcome is likely to happen, what right do you have not to communicate that? You go into a doctor's office, what are they going to do - not tell you the diagnosis?

  Joseph J. Romm

  Believe, Thinking, Doctors

  "Joe Romm on why climate change is a winning political strategy". Interview with Chris Mooney, www.theguardian.com. October 10, 2012.

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• The artist reserves the right to remove a blot on the landscape, to change positions of things, to suit his composition, providing only that he does not transgress the laws of probability.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Artist, Law, Doe

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• Nature prefers the more probable states to the less probable because in nature processes take place in the direction of greater probability. Heat goes from a body at higher temperature to a body at lower temperature because the state of equal temperature distribution is more probable than a state of unequal temperature distribution.

  Max Planck

  Nature, Science, Body

  Max Planck (1915). “Eight Lectures on Theoretical Physics Delivered at Columbia University in 1909”, p.74, Library of Alexandria

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• A person who is psychic is following a line of probability to see a probable future; but it can change. Another causal fact will interfere and that future won't happen.

  Frederick Lenz

  Psychics, Lines, Facts

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• Opinion is the companion of probability within the medieval epistemology.

  Ian Hacking

  Opinion, Medieval, Companion

  Ian Hacking (2006). “The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference”, p.55, Cambridge University Press

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• One: demonstrations always crash. And two: the probability of them crashing goes up exponentially with the number of people watching.

  Steve Jobs

  Two, Numbers, People

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• According to theism, if a universe is to have any probability of existing, this probability is dependent upon God's beliefs, desires and creative acts. But the Hartle-Hawking probability is not dependent on any supernatural considerations; Hartle and Hawking do not sum over anything supernatural in their path integral derivation of the probability amplitude.

  Quentin Smith

  Creative, Religion, Desire

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• The issue, as correctly emphasized by Carl Sagan, is the probability of the evolution of high intelligence and an electronic civilization on an inhabited world. Once we have life (and almost surely it will be very different from life on Earth), what is the probability of its developing a lineage with high intelligence? On Earth, among millions of lineages of organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence; this makes me believe in its utter improbability.

  Ernst Mayr

  Believe, Civilization, Issues

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• The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should insist on the need to engage in a meaningful debate on the entire issue of the truth or falsity (or probability or improbability) of religious tenets, without being subject to accusations of impiety, immorality, impoliteness, or any of the other smokescreens used by the pious to deflect attention from the central issues at hand.

  S. T. Joshi

  Meaningful, Religious, Atheist

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• The highest historical probability can be adduced in support of the proposition that, if it were possible to annihilate the Bible, and with it all its influences, we should destroy with it the whole spiritual system of the moral world.

  Edward Everett

  Faith, Spiritual, Support

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• If often happens too, both in courts and in cabinets, that there are two things going on together,--a main plot and an under-plot; and he that understands only one of them will, in all probability, be the dupe of both. A mistress may rule a monarch, but some obscure favorite may rule the mistress.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Two, Mistress, Together

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.56

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• The probability that we face global warming caused by fossil fuels is now so overwhelming that it is legitimate to doubt the motives of those who deny it

  Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell

  Doubt, Fuel, Fossils

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• It may be laid down as a general rule, that their confidence in and obedience to a government, will be commonly proportioned to the goodness or badness of its administration . . . . Various reasons have been suggested in the course of these papers, to induce a probability that the general government will be better administered than the particular governments.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Government, Paper, Federalism

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2014). “The Federalist Papers”, p.126, Courier Corporation

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• It is a well-known fact that in countries in which the national debt is properly funded, and an object of established confidence, it answers most of the purposes of money. Transfers of stock, or public debt, are there equivalent to payments in specie; or, in other words, stock, in the principal transactions of business, passes current as specie. The same thing would, in all probability, happen here, under the like circumstances.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Country, Purpose, Debt

  Alexander Hamilton, Lyndon LaRouche (2016). “The Vision of Hamilton: Hamilton's 4 Reports and LaRouche's 4 Laws”, p.10, Executive Intelligence Review

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• In far from equilibrium conditions, the concept of probability that underlies Boltzmann's order principle is no longer valid if the structures we observe do not correspond to a maximum of complexions

  Ilya Prigogine

  Order, Principles, Structure

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• We come finally, however, to the relation of the ideal theory to real world, or "real" probability. If he is consistent a man of the mathematical school washes his hands of applications. To someone who wants them he would say that the ideal system runs parallel to the usual theory: "If this is what you want, try it: it is not my business to justify application of the system; that can only be done by philosophizing; I am a mathematician". In practice he is apt to say: "try this; if it works that will justify it".

  John Edensor Littlewood

  Running, Real, School

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• While feeling far less injured by toil than my friends took for granted I must be, I yet was always aware of the strong probability that my life would end as the lives of hard literary workers usually end, - in paralysis, with months or years of imbecility.

  Harriet Martineau

  Strong, Years, Feelings

  Harriet Martineau (2015). “Harriet Martineau's Autobiography (Vol. I: Abridged, Annotated)”, p.118, BIG BYTE BOOKS

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• The best practical advice then is: try to maximize your expected payoff, which is the sum of all payoffs multiplied by probabilities.

  Howard Raiffa

  Advice, Trying, Payoff

  Howard Raiffa (1982). “The Art and Science of Negotiation”, p.31, Harvard University Press

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• The historical museum has to be very conservative and careful in its choices. The modern museum, on the other hand, has to be audacious, to take chances. It has to consider the probability that it would be wrong in a good many cases and take the consequences later.

  Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

  Museums, Hands, Choices

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• An electron is real; a probability is not.

  Hans Christian von Baeyer

  Real, Electrons

  "Information, The New Language of Science". Book by Hans Christian von Baeyer, 2003.

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• The true power is in the imagination which dares to speculate upon that which is not yet. The imagination, backed by great expectations, can bring about almost any reality within the range of probabilities.

  Seth

  Reality, True Power, Expectations

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• The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.

  Alan Greenspan

  Zero, United States, Debt

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• The idea is to buy when the probability is greatest that the market is going to advance.

  Martin Zweig

  Ideas

  "Martin Zweig Growth Investing Screen: How does it work?", www.businessinsider.com. May 7, 2011.

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• Take the probability of loss times the amount of possible loss from the probability of gain times the amount of possible gain. That is what we're trying to do. It's imperfect, but that's what it's all about.

  Warren Buffett

  Loss, Trying, Gains

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