When you’re listening to the news, you will often hear words that are meant to communicate the probability of something happening.
A terrorist attack is “a realistic possibility”, the spread of a certain strain of virus is “highly likely", the relegation of your favourite football team is “possible”.
But when you hear these terms, do you really know what kind of probabilities they’re trying to convey? Do you know how likely “likely” is? Or what probability “probable” is meant to get across?
In some cases, it seems you probably don't.
Professor Adam Kucharski, author of Proof, the Uncertain Science of Certainty, designed a quiz to work out the actual probabilities of the language we use to convey risks.
The data he got back shows how sometimes these words mean very different things to different people.
If you want to try the quiz for yourself, head over to https://probability.kucharski.io/
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Presenter: Charlotte McDonald
Series producer: Tom Colls
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However one may turn the matter, one cannot discover any reason why an ideological distortion of truth should be more useful to the bourgeoisie than a correct theory.
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This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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Government corruption isn’t an anomaly. It is part of the system itself. We should expect government to be corrupt. Free markets are the antidote to this corruption.
