So Trump was 29% likely to win. What does 29% mean?” he asks. This is an odd question for many: they’re doing a Master’s degree at Harvard, and they’re being asked what a percentage means. The question is aiming at the gut reaction of the brain to the number. Inevitably, students think it might be a trick question. Dan waits a while, and when no-one raises their hands, he breaks away from the example to tell a story: “You know, when I first started teaching, I was terrified of silence. I thought, ‘oh my god, I’ve got to do something, they’re not saying anything’.” The class laughs: he has eased the tension created by the silence. “The more I taught, the more I realised that silences are important in a class – they give time for people to think. These days, I’m not afraid of silence at all.” After a few seconds, a woman puts up her hand. “Well, obviously, I knew that it meant there was some chance that he would win. But it was still a shock that the 29% happened.

Five percent of the people think;
ten percent of the people think they think;
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.

In most polls there are always about 5 percent of the people who 'don't know.' What isn't generally understood is that it's the same people in every poll.

About 90 percent of the things in our lives are right, and about 10 percent are wrong. If we want to be happy, all we have to do is to concentrate on the 90 percent that are right, and ignore the 10 percent that are wrong. If we want to be worried and bitter and have stomach ulcers, all we have to do is to concentrate on the 10 percent that are wrong and ignore the 90 percent that are glorious.

Two Dutch researchers did a study in which they had groups of students answer forty-two fairly demanding questions from the board game Trivial Pursuit. Half were asked to take five minutes beforehand to think about what it would mean to be a professor and write down everything that came to mind. Those students got 55.6 percent of the questions right. The other half of the students were asked to first sit and think about soccer hooligans. They ended up getting 42.6 percent of the Trivial Pursuit questions right. The “professor” group didn’t know more than the “soccer hooligan” group. They weren’t smarter or more focused or more serious. They were simply in a “smart” frame of mind, and, clearly, associating themselves with the idea of something smart, like a professor, made it a lot easier — in that stressful instant after a trivia question was asked — to blurt out the right answer.

Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.

Consideraba que había aprobado la prueba por pura casualidad, ya que por azar había respondido bien a numerosas preguntas de elección múltiple. Con escasos conocimientos, solo lo necesario para excluir todas las respuestas menos dos, tenía una posibilidad entre mil de obtener todas las respuestas correctas, se dijo. Para lograr veinte, las posibilidades eran de una entre un millón. Sin embargo, ese mismo test lo habían realizado quizás un millón de jóvenes en todo el país. Alguno había de tener suerte.

Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number. Now, and this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. Because a lot people will have this and it's very mild. They'll get better very rapidly. They don't even see a doctor. They don't even call a doctor. You never hear about those people. So you can't put them down in the category of the overall population in terms of this corona flu and/or virus. So you just can't do that. So, if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work. Some of them go to work, but they get better.

In any profession, 90% of people are clueless but work by situational imitation, narrow mimicry & semi-conscious role-playing. Except social "science" and journalism where it is 99% and 100%, respectively.

It turns out that only twenty percent of human beings have a sense of irony — which means that eighty percent of the world takes everything at face value. I can’t imagine anything worse than that. Okay, maybe I can, but imagine reading the morning newspaper and believing it all to be true on some level.

When someone is honestly 55 percent right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60 percent right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him thank God.

But what’s to be said about 75 percent right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100 percent right? Whoever says he’s 100 percent right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.

Ninety - nine percent right is still one percent wrong!

One percent intention, ninety nine percent desire.

Ninety-five percent of people who walk the earth are simply inert. One percent are saints, and one percent are assholes. The other three percent are people who do what they say they can do.