Hi Eric! Thank you for sharing your thoughts! I chose to watch the interview with Professor Stuart Firestein instead of the interview with Agustin Rayo so I found it insightful to read what you found most interesting about the interview. To your point about the distinction about what someone will do and what someone must do, who or what determines actions that are optional or mandatory? Do Professor Rayo’s thoughts on this distinction also extend to self-imposed restrictions or requirements on what is mandatory and what is not? I think this relates well to your point about what must and will happen in a fully deterministic system. Emily

After reflecting on “Uncertain Risks” by Profs. Goodman and De Vivo, I found the paragraph that compares the COVID-19 pandemic to the Spanish flu most illuminating as a non-quantitatively-inclined reader. Readers who are not quantitative-focused may be more willing to listen to articles and reports that compare COVID-19 to the Spanish flu. However, the authors explain in this paragraph that there is a 100x lower chance of dying from COVID-19 than dying from the Spanish flu. It is easier to visualize how much lower the risk with COVID-19 is when explicitly compared to the Spanish flu. The quantitative points in this paragraph also clearly show why the two events are not necessarily comparable without focusing on specifics that would confuse someone who is not quantitatively inclined. This paragraph is also illuminating because many media articles compared COVID-19 to the Spanish flu when in reality this comparison is not as strong as initially presented.

Hi Cici, I’ve also never lived in a region that has earthquakes so I was also interested to learn about earthquake resistant buildings. I wonder if people will be able to develop buildings that can resist more than one earthquake in the future. As you mentioned, it is likely expensive and burdensome to rebuild large areas. It would help if researchers developed materials that could resist even two, as opposed to one, earthquake. I also wonder if there are any products that could help protect a building against an earthquake that don’t require rebuilding. Emily

Hi Eric! Thank you for sharing your thoughts on Dr. Jill Tarter’s interview! I was surprised by her support for science fiction. I also previously thought the main benefit of science fiction is to drive public interest. In addition, I thought that science fiction might create unrealistic expectations about what is possible in science. I think this connects to the idea of uncertainty in science that Professor Goodman and Professor Avi Loeb discussed. Since scientists often do not know what they are looking for until they find it, science fiction might also serve a purpose of revealing some of the inventions that might be possible in the future. Emily

Hi Daniel, Thank you for sharing your thoughts about the interview with Professor Laibson! I enjoyed reading your post. I also found the discussion about using equations to model economic activities intriguing. Since I often think about equations in mathematical situations, I found it surprising that equations can also model qualitative situations. I agree with your point that modeling behavioral economics is challenging because people have different values. To add on to this idea, I think it also relates to Professor Laibson’s discussion of uncertainty and the difficulty of making informed decisions based on limited experience. I wonder if economists can create more accurate equations by creating smaller subgroups. For example, economists might be able to create different equations for different age groups or risk preferences. Emily

Hi Zev! Thank you for your thoughtful questions! I was also interested in learning more specifics about how we can quantify uncertainty. It might have been interesting to also ask George Church to share examples of how we can quantify uncertainty in a range of fields. Further, I wonder how different fields quantify uncertainty differently and whether they accept different levels of uncertainty. For example, I would think that fields that people have studied longer, such as physical science, might have a lower level of uncertainty than fields that use new technologies, such as using computers to conduct 3D imaging in genetics. Emily

Hi Lauren! Thank you for sharing your thoughts! I enjoyed reading your post and I was also surprised to hear about the “confidence interval” in regards to predictions. Before watching the interview with Dan Gilbert, I had only heard about confidence intervals in the context of statistics. It seems to me that “confidence intervals” in predictions exist in a space between qualitative-focused and quantitative-focused settings because we can use both quantitative and qualitative skills to formulate hypotheses about the future. I also like the questions that you posed! Expanding upon those questions, I wonder how people’s definitions of truth influence broader spaces. For example, if one politician views truth less rigorously than others, how will this impact the amount of information they share with the public? Further, I think there could be an argument that truth is more important in certain professions in comparison to others. Although truth is important in politics, one could argue that telling the truth is a lot more important in medicine or national defense. Emily