
Why are people attracted to 50:50 probabilities? - vo2maxer
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/12/12/why-are-people-attracted-to-50-50-probabilities
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Nokinside
I can't read the whole article but...

> there was a probability of between 30% and 95% that Osama bin Laden was in
> the Abbottabad compound in Pakistan in April 2011.

So they gave Obama 62.5% probability and uncertainty estimate for the
prediction ±32.5 percentage points??! Obama was right. That's 50:50 decision
from his point of view.

If you have to make a decision, there is usually virtual certainty, very
likely and unlikely and somewhere in between. 50% change or 60% change becomes
meaningful if you repeat the thing multiple times. For a single event, it does
not matter much.

