we are saved by a change in perspective. Large collections can sometimes yield their own powerful simplifications. It is surely difficult, impossible really, to predict exactly when you will next sneeze. However, if we broaden our view to the larger collection of all humans on earth, we can predict that in the next second there’ll be roughly eighty thousand sneezes worldwide.6 The point is that by shifting to a statistical perspective, earth’s large population becomes the key—not the obstacle—to predictive power. Large groups often display statistical regularities absent at the level of the
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