Miracles vs. Probability

"There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle." -- Einstein

It is often during the anomalous, mysterious moments in life that we make the decision above. We must choose to either connect the missing dots in our understanding of the world with myth or with causality.

For example, let's say that somebody comes into your life and helps you out of a major problem or helps you achieve a goal at just the right time. The mythical explanation could be that everything is controlled by fate and the right things always happen at the right times. The causal explanation could be that by meeting people with similar interests, you are more likely to run into people you connect with.

Or consider, "The Birthday Problem". How many people do you think must be in a room before the probability that some share a birthday, ignoring the year and ignoring leap days, becomes at least 50 percent? Conventional wisdom would say you would need a large number of people for this to happen. According to this wisdom, if you had the same birthday as somebody in your class, you might create some sort of myth to connect the dots. However, in actuality, according to the law of large numbers, it is more likely than not that in any gathering of 23 or more persons, two of them will share a birthday.

I've come to the belief that that the different ways of looking at the world are not mutually exclusive and that one way of looking at the world is not inherently better than the other. I believe and have seen both ways used in empowering ways and/or limiting ways. In the end, I think applications of ones beliefs are key.

For example, let's take the American myth that anybody can achieve their dreams. According to one of my professors 48% of people in America believe that they will be in the top 1% of the richest people in the country. So obviously, 47% of the people are wrong. However, I still believe that people need to keep up hope and reach for the stars so the belief could be used in an empowering way. Similarly, somebody with a more probabalistic view of the world might look more into how the 1% of people got where they are and then replicate important parts of the strategy thus increasing the probability they fall in the 1% category.