“We humans are terrible at dealing with probability. We are not merely bad at it but seem hardwired to be incompetent,…” – Garrett Lisi, Uncalculated Risk.

If you had to make an important choice, what considerations would you employ to safeguard against choosing poorly?

We agree that you would weigh out the intricacies of the contrasts between the choices to dictate an optimal outcome, yet we will seldom make the same considerations in the process.

The premise of choice is one based on the minds and beliefs of the culture or individual contemplating it. The very nature insinuates the natural chaos that shapes what we call real. 

The idea that we can predict the outcomes of our choices with absolute conviction is an absurd idea at best. As stated by Lisi in his essay, assigning a numerical percent of probability to outcomes won’t change the true odds as dictated by natural law.

Our ego often blinds us to the greater probabilities by slightly tipping the odds in our favour, convincing us that some sort of superiority or luck will get us our outcome. “Probably”, “Maybe”, “I Think”, “Likely”. These are terms with no true value but I find myself guilty of wasting energy often pretending they do, as I imagine is not so uncommon.

If we see past our internal workings of self-deluding reassurance, we start to see the vast universe of possibilities that may or may not come to rip the veil of ignorance from our visions. The world beyond your fingertips is limited to your own inhibitions as well as subject to be changed by them.

The difference in outcomes is ultimately determined by the chaotic cohesion of the progression of the universe intersecting with desire at exactly the right moment. This is the true nature of probability in all of its majesty. 

One should strive to love the chaos and allow life to flow however it will. Does this negate the value of choice?

Indeed not.

It magnifies the importance of understanding this cohesion to create more narrowed predictions, enabling us to worry about what would be sensible while discarding what may not.