Shark Brain

[pseudomonas]

New term, courtesy of kht: shark brain

The bit of the brain that doesn't understand probabilities and goes "ARGH IM GOING TO BE EATEN BY SHARKS" on the basis that it's not a physical impossibility that one can be eaten by a shark, to which one needs to (politely and respectfully) say "Dear brain, while I might get eaten by sharks if I went swimming off Cape Town wearing a bacon bikini, it's not actually very likely when I live in a landlocked county and have a sharkproof lock on my front door; also the last fifty times you said ARGH IM GOING TO BE EATEN BY SHARKS it did not come to pass, and so my estimate of the probability on that basis is low".

Comments

[simont]

... though it is a significant risk of installing OpenBSD, of course.

[pseudomonas]

A fair point.

[jack]

I thought it was going to be "you always have to keep thinking unless you'd rather stop" :)

have a sharkproof lock on my front door;

That is not how I understand landsharks to be thwarted ;)

[pseudomonas]

Stopping thinking isn't something that happens in my head, dunno about kht. I have to be a good little Bayesian and say "not only is P(Catastrophe) low, P(Catastrophe|Catastrophising) is also very nearly equally as low, based on historical observations"

[deborah_c]

I do, however, feel strongly that we should get to see you in a bacon bikini...

[pseudomonas]

Pleasingly alliterative, but not awfully vegetarian :P

[deborah_c]

Fairly sure the sharks aren't awfully vegetarian either, so that works out fine ;-)

[moem]

Sounds more like prey fish brain to me.

[ewx]

Now I want to know if the locks on my house are shark-proof.