Cory Doctorow: Our Dangerous Statistical Ignorance
Cory Doctorow’s latest Guardian column - Our dangerous statistical ignorance.
“The single most pernicious threat to liberty today is humanity’s natural
tendency to misunderstand the statistics of rare events. We’re just not wired to have good intuition about things that happen with extreme infrequency.I’ll prove it. If we were good at understanding statistics, then here’s what would happen when you flew to Las Vegas. You’d step out of McCarran airport, stare down the Strip at all those glittering, palatial casinos and say to yourself, “Holy crap – think of all the suckers who must have lost everything to finance this place!” Instead, our foolish minds are filled with thoughts like, “Man, look at all the money in this town – I’m going to win big!” And another casino is built.”
… read on…