{"id":167632,"date":"2023-07-16T02:22:58","date_gmt":"2023-07-16T07:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/we-cant-predict-the-future-but-appreciating-its-uncertainties-will-make-us-happier"},"modified":"2023-07-16T02:22:58","modified_gmt":"2023-07-16T07:22:58","slug":"we-cant-predict-the-future-but-appreciating-its-uncertainties-will-make-us-happier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/we-cant-predict-the-future-but-appreciating-its-uncertainties-will-make-us-happier","title":{"rendered":"We can\u2019t predict the future, but appreciating its uncertainties will make us happier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/we-cant-predict-the-future-but-appreciating-its-uncertainties-will-make-us-happier2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In it, he explores how we can make better, scientifically informed predictions about the world around us, using maths. \u201cMathematics can provide us with the objective tools to bypass the foibles of our own biology \u2013 the limitations imposed by our own thought processes, the compulsions that ultimately make us human, but let us down when it comes to making inferences about the world around us,\u201d he writes. \u201cThey are humanity\u2019s shortcuts: the preconceptions and cognitive biases, refined over millennia of evolution, that all too often lead us astray when we try to apply our brain\u2019s old rules to our society\u2019s new environments.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>No matter how tempting it is to think, \u201cOoh, that\u2019s a bit spooky\u201d when faced with a completely random coincidence or chance occurrence, we should all be expecting unusual things to happen all the time, he says.<\/p>\n<p>Yates describes a person who, when browsing in a secondhand bookshop far from where they grew up, opens a copy of their favourite children\u2019s book, only to find their own name inscribed inside. Yet, he says, \u201cthe law of truly large numbers\u201d dictates that, just as someone wins the lottery almost every week, with enough opportunities, such extraordinary coincidences are far more likely to happen than you might think. \u201cThere are so many different types of coincidences that make us say: \u2018Well, that\u2019s extraordinary.\u2019 But it\u2019s not unlikely that some of them happen to us every so often.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In it, he explores how we can make better, scientifically informed predictions about the world around us, using maths. \u201cMathematics can provide us with the objective tools to bypass the foibles of our own biology \u2013 the limitations imposed by our own thought processes, the compulsions that ultimately make us human, but let us down [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,385,2229,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-evolution","category-mathematics","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}