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Originally Posted by David M
My point remains that if we alter our behavior according to "might, maybe or probably" theories, then the human race will end up behaving in some very irrational ways. Concluding petroleum causes warming and modifying our behavior because of this "maybe" is a step in the wrong direction for rational humans to be taking.
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You changed "probably" again in your post, but this time you only changed it to "maybe" instead of "might".
I will have to disagree with you on this one.
All public policy, and in fact all human actions, are based on "might, maybe, or probably" theories. If people only chose actions that were 100% certain to succeed, we would never do anything. When person A asks somebody out, they don't know with 100% certainty that they will say yes; it is "might, maybe, or probably". When politicians put forward a tax proposal or a crime proposal, there is no 100% certainty on what will happen; there is "might, maybe, or probably."
All rational human activity is taking actions with some good idea as to the probability of success. Can this lead to irrational behaviour? Sure: when people are completely incapable of estimating the probabilities involved. That's why there are a lot of people who are petrified of flying but drive all the time, which is an irrational behaviour; they simply don't realize that the probability of dying in a plane crash is far less than driving, and so they irrationally base their behaviours on this erroneous estimation of probability.
If you don't draw conclusions from "might, maybe, or probably", I would be
very interested in knowing how you live your life.