One in a hundred

Tuesday, 5 September 2006

John Allen Paulos writes for ABC News about Cheney’s “One Percent Doctrine”:

bq. A companion to the Cheney 1 percent action doctrine (if the probability is at least 1 percent, act) is the administration’s non-action doctrine (if the probability is less than 99 percent, then don’t act). This latter doctrine is generally invoked in discussions of global warming, where it seems absolute certainty is required to justify any significant action. Ideology determines which of these two inconsistent doctrines to invoke.