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From: crs@lanl.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.bio,net.origins,net.sci
Subject: Re: The missing step -- self-reproducing organisms
Message-ID: <16573@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 21-Nov-84 14:40:38 EST
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Posted: Wed Nov 21 14:40:38 1984
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> The fallacy was in attempting to lump the concepts "has occurred during
> the past N years" and "has a probability P of occurring in N years"
> together to decide that P = 1.  Probability in its technical sense has
> properties somewhat different from its everyday usage.
> 
> The attempt to estimate probabilities for rare events is fraught with
> difficulty.  A recent example is the attampt to determine nuclear
> reactor safety:  How does one estimate the probability of a specific
> class of failure that has never yet been observed?  What are the odds
> for a reactor having a catastrophic meltdown?  What are the odds of
> a Three-Mile Island class disaster (1 has been observed in N reactor-
> years; is the correct answer "1/N reactors per year"?)?
> 

For some interesting reading in this area try _The_Cult_Of_The_Atom_ by
(I believe) Daniel Ford.