Expect the worst, hope for the best
Dec 27th, 2006 by Ashley
We all know about this, but to say is one thing, to do another.
You can rationalize all you like but when you’re in the middle of something, probability and statistics are all crap, as long as there are people involved.
It’s one of my excuse for not learning probability and statistics well (the other reason is that I don’t like impure mathematics.) They have their meaning and their value of existance, but you can’t generalize people and natural randomness. We know the accident rate of all kinds of transportation; however, one might die of something ridiculously rare. What will happen will happen. I’m not talking about fate. I’m just saying… I don’t believe in probability and statistics.
I’m drifting too far away. There are times we think we’re ready to face things, to deal with stuffs, and it turns out we aren’t. Not that we don’t know ourselves well. We just can never be sure how we’d react, and ometimes all you can do is just put the statistics together. And you’ll never know what other people would do. You think of all the possible scenario, from the best to the worst. But most of the time, it turns out to be the one you least expected, something ridiculous that you cannot even imagine, let along coming up with a plan to deal with it. People lie; even if they don’t want to; sometimes they don’t even know they are lying. We should all try to be honest at least to ourselves. It’s pathetic to lie to oneself, consciously or not. You might live happier, but it’s still pathetic.