Lottery paradox, DNA evidence and other stories: How to accept uncertain statements

Abstract

I think we can agree that dealing with uncertainty is not easy. Probability is the main tool for dealing with uncertainty, and we know there are many probability-related puzzles and paradoxes. Here I describe a rather idiosyncratic selection that highlights the problem of accepting uncertain statements. Without going into a formal decision theory, there are simple intuitive rational bases for doing that, for instance based on high probability alone. The lottery paradox shows the logical problem of accepting uncertain statements based on high probability. The DNA evidence story is an example of the use probabilistic reasoning in court, where philosophical differences between the schools of inference -- the frequentist, Bayesian and likelihood schools -- lead to substantial differences in the quantification of evidence.