Creative Ignorance

Abstract

To secure the public trust, risk analysts should divorce themselves from the philosophy of probabilism and the language of probability. Given the antecedent conditions, the chance of an outcome is either one or zero. Values between one and zero must be based on something other than the conditions and are misleading. Probabilism holds that the same conditions produce varying outcomes and assigns fractional probabilities to each of the outcomes. Probabilists conclude this by ignoring the differences between the antecedent conditions. When probabilists do not know if an outcome can or cannot occur, they conclude that it can. As epidemiologists seldom, if ever, know the particular conditions, they conclude that individuals within large populations are at risk to the same degree. Indeed, the less they know about us as individuals, the more at risk the public becomes. Not knowing the conditions, probabilists base their calculations on their ignorance of the conditions. Using one and zero equivocally, philosopher mathematicians tailored the language of probability to the philosophy of probabilism. With it, they convinced players who, given the conditions, cannot win that they could. Epidemiologists employ it to convince persons who, given the conditions, are not at risk that they are.

Keywords:

• equivocation
• logical operators
• affirming by degree
• privatives
• anthropomorphism.