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Prof_Sai · 09-02-2013

I listen to a podcast called "Freakonomics", and one of the themes that comes up often with them is the observation that most people are spectacularly bad at calculating risk and probability.

People underestimate the risk of the familiar, and overestimate the risk of new or different things. They don't understand the results of adding risks together. (What is unlikely once can become inevitable if you do it thousands of times.) Casinos and Creationism are both built on taking advantage of the mistakes people make. And to me, your assurances about nuclear look like those same mistakes.

You really NEED statistics training if you want to talk intelligently about such things.

The chance of one specific reactor having a disaster is indeed low. But you have to multiply that chance by the 430 currently active reactors, and again by the time these reactors continue to operate. Roll a pair of dice 430 times and snake eyes is no longer a risk but a dead certainty.

09-02-2013	#48
Prof_Sai Instigator Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Earth, mostly Posts: 5,875	Re: Fukushima still leaking radiation I listen to a podcast called "Freakonomics", and one of the themes that comes up often with them is the observation that most people are spectacularly bad at calculating risk and probability. People underestimate the risk of the familiar, and overestimate the risk of new or different things. They don't understand the results of adding risks together. (What is unlikely once can become inevitable if you do it thousands of times.) Casinos and Creationism are both built on taking advantage of the mistakes people make. And to me, your assurances about nuclear look like those same mistakes. You really NEED statistics training if you want to talk intelligently about such things. The chance of one specific reactor having a disaster is indeed low. But you have to multiply that chance by the 430 currently active reactors, and again by the time these reactors continue to operate. Roll a pair of dice 430 times and snake eyes is no longer a risk but a dead certainty.