Was this speaker a believer in Discworldian probability theory? Which states, of course, that million-to-one chances come up 100% of the time, but thousand-to-one chances never. Maybe those numbers weren’t plucked out of the air.
All we have to do is operate the LHC while standing on one foot, and the probability of the universe exploding will be nudged away from million-to-one (doesn’t matter which direction—whoever heard of a 999,999-1 chance coming up?) and the universe will be saved.
Was this speaker a believer in Discworldian probability theory? Which states, of course, that million-to-one chances come up 100% of the time, but thousand-to-one chances never. Maybe those numbers weren’t plucked out of the air.
All we have to do is operate the LHC while standing on one foot, and the probability of the universe exploding will be nudged away from million-to-one (doesn’t matter which direction—whoever heard of a 999,999-1 chance coming up?) and the universe will be saved.