The cyclone that “devastated” the coast of Ecuador, among other events that should have happened, but did not, opens a debate about the concept of credibility. The belief that something will happen or has already happened is directly related to its probability, from the possibility that a business will succeed, that a person will die of an illness, that an earthquake will occur, all the way to a person being innocent or guilty in a trial. Ultimately, probability is the basis of human thinking; for this reason, as the philosopher Bertrand Russell claims, it is one of the most important concepts for life.

One way to understand it is to see it as a tendency or possibility of a fact, phenomenon or event. “Classical probability” is clearly explained by games of chance and obtained by mathematics, they are the possible outcomes of a process of total possibilities. Probability based on the relative frequency of a set of events that are truly real and can be counted is the cornerstone of scientific discovery. Hypothesis testing methods use this probability to estimate the certainty of what human reason has guessed.

Leadership: The Hubris Syndrome

In the 21st century, a new form of probability prevails: “modern probability”.

This probability is assessed based on evidentiary interpretation, the degree to which the information presented is believed to warrant the conclusion, a concept now known as probability.

Probability is what is likely, that is, true, also deriving this word from the Latin verus (truth) and similis (similar), it is from the set of available data and their presentation. For example, in court, care is taken to ignore inadmissible and biased information, and the strength of arguments is taken into account when sentencing.

‘Churchill factor’

Probabilities in the modern world have ceased to belong exclusively to mathematics; psychology and social networks influence them. Today, probability is more subjective, heavily influenced by the biases people have to accept or reject certain data or the access they have to it. It is human minds, their preconceived ideas and their feelings that can underestimate the threats or overestimate the possibilities of reality. Distortions, intentional or not, of reality are the order of the day and errors in human judgment caused by lack of data, the type of data we use, and the way we deal with probability and the reasoning that follows, psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls “noise.”

Restore civility?

In order not to make mistakes, it is necessary to reduce or eliminate “noise” in business, political, health, judicial, social, and even family decisions. The best that can be done is to recapture classical probabilistic reasoning using solid statistics, relying on multiple reliable sources of information, nuanced views with those of others to gain a broader perspective, and applying big data and intelligence. (OR)