uninterestingly t1_itgwpfm wrote on October 23, 2022 at 3:50 PM

Reply to comment by Impossible_Garbage_4 in Signatures of alien technology could be how humanity first finds extraterrestrial life by WallStreetDoesntBet

I agree with everything here but your phrasing. Saying you can 100% guarantee something that you have zero proof of, even if it is overwhelmingly likely, is just mathematically wrong. 100% guarantees should very rarely be used, and yet people throw them around left and right. It's just one of my pet peeves.

Buscemi_D_Sanji t1_ith98z5 wrote on October 23, 2022 at 5:15 PM

Heh, I have quite a few pet peeves, like affect/effect and saying there's instead of there're when referring to plurals. But I've spent some time making sure my students know that there is no such thing as 100% certainty for things existing in the universe. But then, you can say "I'm 100% certain that one does not equal two" and that's true, so it's more about being conscientious of the language you use to describe reality.

Impossible_Garbage_4 t1_ith68g4 wrote on October 23, 2022 at 4:55 PM

I said 100% certainty, and I’m not a scientist. I can be certain of something and be wrong. Watch out for how statistics are phrased