People confuse science and scientists. Science is great, but individual scientists are dangerous. They are human; they are marred by the biases humans have. Perhaps even more. For most scientists are hard-headed, otherwise they would not derive the patience and energy to perform the Herculean tasks asked of them, like spending eighteen hours a day […]

There could be many reasons however here’s what I think. We are not good at probabilistic thinking because for a long time we didn’t need to in a small society. We simply did not compute probabilities because we did not dare to? Surely the reason is rather because we did not need to. Much of […]

In recent times I’ve noticed people get confused when it comes to personal experience vs base-rate. Which should you trust? We must learn to distrust personal experience a bit when it conflicts with the base-rate; but when the base-rate comes from an uncertain secondhand source, we must also distrust it when it conflicts with personal […]