Possibly a Serious Possibility

Numeric Probabilities vs. Verbal Phrases

• Several commenters argue that mapping words to probability ranges is inherently confusing; they’d prefer people state numeric ranges directly.
• Others note humans don’t naturally think in exact probabilities and often don’t have a true number in mind, so standardized phrases can still be useful.
• There’s concern that performing math on “butt-pulled” numbers creates an illusion of rigor; others counter that this is exactly how Fermi estimates and Bayesian reasoning help people calibrate over time.

Calibration, Context, and Repeated Events

• A recurring theme is that phrases like “remote possibility,” “almost certain,” “one in a million,” etc., change their practical meaning when events repeat many times.
• People distinguish between probability “per trial” versus “over a period” or “overall,” and blame miscommunication on missing context (time frame, sample, etc.).
• Some are surprised that official yardsticks label ~30% as “unlikely”; others say the point is not intuitive correctness but consistent shared usage once defined.

Institutional Standards and Ambiguity

• Intelligence communities in the US and UK have explicit vocabularies for likelihood and confidence; comparisons are made to RFC-style requirement keywords.
• Commenters suspect that, historically, ambiguity in such language has sometimes been a feature rather than a bug, allowing policymakers deniability.
• Some suggest abandoning everyday words entirely (e.g., coded risk levels) or just publishing numeric ranges with error bars.

Risk Communication in Medicine

• Several anecdotes describe doctors refusing to quantify surgical or ICU risks, even when data likely exist.
• A doctor explains barriers: difficulty modeling individual risk, liability concerns, lack of incentives, and wide error margins on any estimate.
• Critics argue that withholding even rough base rates forces patients to “do their own research” and undermines trust.

Legal / FOIA and “Any Value to an Attacker”

• A side discussion covers a FOIA case about database schemas where a city argued that anything of even marginal help to an attacker should be exempt.
• Commenters see this as an over-literal, anti-transparency reading; courts eventually drew different lines but still treated schemas as exempt “file layouts.”

Other Side Threads

• Debate over COVID lab-leak probabilities illustrates how people want explicit quantitative reasoning but often get competing narratives instead.
• Separate mini-discussions cover “rare vs common,” vague quantifiers like “most” and “almost all,” and the difficulty many people have with probabilistic thinking generally.