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> "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." -- Terry Pratchett Making fun of the fact that if someone says "it's a million-to-one chance, but it might just work!" in fiction, you know it's going to work. In _Guards! Guards!_ this is taken to the point that…
From the article: “24 million babies will someday be President.” This seems an improbable claim. Is he saying something sensible by virtue of the surrounding analysis that I’m just not following?
From the article: “24 million babies will someday be President.” This seems an improbable claim. Is he saying something sensible by virtue of the surrounding analysis that I’m just not following?
"Not in a million years"–something that might happen once in a million years for an individual–happens over 8000 times per year for people on earth. Many of them have smartphones with camera to record the event. That's why we have an actual video where quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
My chance of dying because of a dinosaur-estinction-event-class asteroid hit is one in a 65 million years, thus every two and a half days on average a random person on earth dies being hit by an asteroid of that size.
Found a fun CgpGrey video on 1 in a million experience. [here]( https://youtu.be/PmWQmZXYd74?si=BDBkrfxEXgAgeRfw )
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My chance of dying because of a dinosaur-estinction-event-class asteroid hit is one in a 65 million years, thus every two and a half days on average a random person on earth dies being hit by an asteroid of that size.
This implies that your death and all others are not correlated. I’d argue that if an asteroid hits the death correlation is almost 1.
Found a fun CgpGrey video on 1 in a million experience. [here]( https://youtu.be/PmWQmZXYd74?si=BDBkrfxEXgAgeRfw )
Is there a word for what he's doing with his voice in this video? Vsauce does the same thing. It's a strange cadence that would make me lift an eyebrow if someone was speaking to me like that in real life. It's like if captain Kirk removed emotion from his voice and began to lecture you.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10693664
From 2015, so the style might have changed
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone offering that bet though would also alter the odds though. Because why would someone offer such a ridiculous bet after you've told your name, unless they had special information about your name? Although it being a possible YouTube prank channel would make it also possible that you actually have a chance to win for the reactions.
This is part of a very important principle: if someone approaches you about something, you should be far more suspicious than if you had randomly picked someone off the street. The most well known application of this is teaching kids to ask a random shopkeeper for help if they get lost, but to not get in a stranger's car when offered a lift.
If an attractive lady walks up to me at a party, first thing I'm doing is asking for references.