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Physics

Probability is as useful to physics as flat-Earth theory

You can't explain how the world really works with probability, says physicist David Deutsch. It's time for a different approach

By David Deutsch

30 September 2015

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Probability theory was devised by gamblers

Lucy Ridges/Millennium Images, UK

PROBABILITY theory is a quaint little piece of mathematics. It is about sets of non-negative numbers that are attached to actual and possible physical events, that sum to 1 and that obey certain rules. It has numerous practical applications.

So does the flat-Earth theory: for instance, it’s an excellent approximation when laying out your garden.

Science abandoned the misconception that Earth extends over an infinite plane, or has edges, millennia ago. Probability insinuated itself into physics relatively recently, yet the idea that the world actually follows probabilistic rules is even…

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