The Hill We Die On

“Thanks again, see you tomorrow at 8. I’m coming 100%. Take care. Goodbye!”

A completely ordinary sentence. Grammatically correct. Socially normal. Mathematically wrong.

Yes, I know. Imagine correcting someone in real life and saying, “Well, you can’t really say you are coming 100%.” Then you start listing absurd reasons: what if there is an earthquake, what if a nuclear war breaks out, what if you fall and break your leg, what if your car dies on the way?

You would sound ridiculous… Probably like a complete weirdo.

And most people would stop inviting you anywhere.

But mathematically, that annoying weirdo would be right.

Nothing is 100% certain. Nothing!

And in the same way, almost nothing is truly 0%.

Some events are so unlikely that there may not be enough zeros to write after 0.0000000 before we finally place a 1 and a percent sign at the end.

But still, that is not zero… Nothing is 0%. Nothing is 100%.

And at Odds of Reality, we are ready to die on that hill.

If this way of thinking makes sense to you, continue with the essays in Insights.

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