Why Our Brains Do Not Intuitively Grasp Probabilities

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http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-our-brains-do-not-intuitively-grasp-probabilities&sc=WR_20080909

Our senses evolved for perceiving objects of middling size—between, say, grains of sand and mountain ranges. We are not equipped to perceive atoms and germs, on one end of the scale, or galaxies and expanding universes, on the other end.

We can detect objects moving at a walking or running pace, but the glacially slow movement of continents (and glaciers) and the mind-bogglingly fast speed of light are imperceptible.

Our timescales range from the psychological “now” of three seconds in duration (according to Harvard University psychologist Stephen Pinker) to the few decades of a human lifetime, far too short to witness evolution, continental drift or long-term environmental changes.

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