It’s “Possible” to be Confused About “Possibility”

The word “possibility” can be used in two different ways: ways that are quite often confused and conflated, leading to some huge errors in thought. This iseven done by very intelligent people.

One way has to do with our uncertainty about the future. Due to our limited prediction capabilities, we often look at and call future events in which we think at the time “could happen” as a “possibility”. This type of possibility I’ll call “epistemic possibility” as “epistemic” assesses our “knowledge...