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californicaltoday at 7:45 AM1 replyview on HN

Every breath you take, there is a 99.99% chance that everything is normal, and a 0.01% chance that you breathe mild acid which horribly burns and causes a massive coughing fit.

It probably don’t cause long term damage unless that breath happened to be more important than normal, like while driving right as a child runs into the road.

Would you act differently knowing that you had one of these occasional acid breaths? Even if it only happened once per day on average (0.001%)


Replies

elendilmtoday at 10:02 AM

And your point is? Laws of probability doesn't discriminate.

There is always a probability a planet killer GRB hits us and we all die. Should we take precautions in our everyday life. Or should we wear helmet while walking on the road pray a coconut not falling on our head is just 99.999%.