Seth Shostak Quotes

If something happens for one season, for me, it is a coincidence. Twice, we can start talking about it.

If you do something often enough, a ratio will appear

Statistics is the grammar of science.

Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

Inferences of Science and Common Sense differ from those of deductive logic and mathematics in a very important respect, namely, when the premises are true and the reasoning correct, the conclusion is only probable.

What seems most likely is generally true.

On their way toward modern science human beings have discarded meaning. The concept is replaced by the formula, the cause by rules and probability.

A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge

The art of drawing conclusions from experiments and observations consists in evaluating probabilities and in estimating whether they are sufficiently great or numerous enough to constitute proofs. This kind of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than it is commonly thought to be. . . .

Statistics is a science which ought to be honourable, the basis of many most important sciences; but it is not to be carried on by steam, this science, any more than others are; a wise head is requisite for carrying it on.

Miracles seldom occur in the lives of those who do not consider them possible.

No isolated experiment, however significant in itself, can suffice for the experimental demonstration of any natural phenomenon; for the "one chance in a million" will undoubtedly occur, with no less and no more than its appropriate frequency, however surprised we may be that it should occur to us.

As a scientist, I don't believe anything. Science shouldn't use the word belief. There are things more likely and less likely. Science can say nothing with absolute certainty.

Expose every belief to the light of reason, discourse, facts, scientific observations; question everything, be sceptical because this is the only chance at life you will ever get.

You have to pay the price to be in the right place at the right time often enough that people tend to see you as the regular kind.

Every explanation is after all an hypothesis.

Knowing the importance of luck, you should be particularly suspicious when highly consistent patterns emerge from the comparison of successful and less successful firms. In the presence of randomness, regular patterns can only be mirages.

We may not be able to get certainty, but we can get probability, and half a loaf is better than no bread.

Scientific research was much like prospecting: you went out and you hunted, armed with your maps and instruments, but in the ened your preparations did not matter, or even your intuition. You needed your luck, and whatever benefits accrued to the diligent, through sheer, grinding hard work.

There's nothing special about your fear.

I'm just a normal schmo like anyone else.

We spend our lives guessing at what's going on inside everybody else, and when we happen to get lucky and guess right, we think we 'understand.' Such nonsense. Even a monkey at a computer will type a word now and then.

...theories should be judged by their ability to predict events rather than by the realism of their assumptions.

I never met a soul in this world as normal as me.

A reasonable probability is the only certainty.