I hate “one in a million” because its meaning depends on how many times you’re rolling the die!
I’ll never forgot old World of Warcraft discussions about crit probability. If a particular sequence is “one in a million” and there are 10 million players and each player encounters hundreds or thousands of sequences per day then “one in a million” is pretty effing common!
> I hate “one in a million” because its meaning depends on how many times you’re rolling the die!
I'd argue that it doesn't depend on that at all. That is, its meaning is the same whether you're performing the trial once, a million times, ten million times, or whatever. It's rather whether the implication is "the possibility may be disregarded" or "this should be expected to happen occasionally" that depends on how many times you're performing the trial.
One in a million is more than rolling 4 doubles in a row in backgammon (it's played with two 6 sided dice.) So if a backgammon app or server starts having about 10 thousands players it's not uncommon that every single month (or day) there is such a sequence. Some players will eventually write in a review or in a support forum that the server, the bot, the app cheats against them because of the impossible odds of what just happened. The support staff have to explain the math with dubious results, which is ironic because every single decision in backgammon should be made with probabilities in mind.
Quite likely, further progress will lead to LLMs writing "better" than at least 99% of humans.
I think this will be no more of a contest than playing chess has been: humans don't stand a chance, but it also doesn't matter because being better or worse than the AI is besides the point.
Anyway its like getting better at running because bicycles became a thing: a) pretty soon you are not going to be able to keep up and b) you are better of buying one anyway.
It also explicitly requires the parties and candidates to think beyond the current election cycle. That behavior is not in evidence for at least one major party in the U.S.
A candidate's personal expectation of costs must also be factored in. When a candidate faces criminal charges (to pick an example totally out of the blue) if they lose but can eliminate those if they win, the calculus changes for them.
There aren't just two choices. My neighbor on one side voted for Trump, the one down the street voted for Harris, and I voted for Oliver.
The problem is the concentration of federal power generally and executive power specifically in this administration. Decrease the size and scope of government, particularly at the national level, and there's a lot less to argue about.
The question "Is this a one-way door or a two-way door?" can eliminate that paralysis in the majority of cases where, as you point out, the decision is reversible.
