Reason: The Gift of Numbers and the Limits of Knowing

Why Even Perfect Probabilities Cannot Settle Individual Outcomes or Reveal What Matters Most

Even if a deity gave the exact chance that a treatment would work—say, 74%—that number wouldn't be enough to make a clear decision for any one person. It tells us what tends to happen across a crowd, not what will happen to a particular individual. Some people will be helped, and some won’t, and the number doesn’t say who falls where.

It also hides something important: how much the treatment actually helps when it does work. A small improvement might still count as “success,” but may not be worth the trouble. Without knowing the size of the benefit, it's hard to judge whether the treatment is meaningful.

The deity also says there are unknown factors—reasons we don’t see or understand—that affect whether the treatment works. These hidden things could make a big difference, and they vary from person to person. Because of that, one person might respond well, while someone else might not respond at all. And often, we can’t tell why.

Then there’s the problem of mixed effects. What works for one group might work differently for another. Age, habits, health history, other treatments—all of these can change what happens. But no single study can show how all these moving parts work together. What we end up with is a simplified view that flattens out the complexity.

Even worse, the deity doesn’t say what harms might come with the treatment. There could be pain, side effects, long-term damage, or other costs. Without that information, it's impossible to weigh the good against the bad.

And finally, even if we try to guess how much good a treatment does, that’s all it is: a guess. Real-life results vary so much that the true benefit is often hidden behind all the noise. We don’t get to see it clearly—we only see rough estimates, shaped by uncertainty.

So even a divine number leaves out the most important questions: how much will it help, how much might it hurt, what unknowns are at play, and how do all the parts interact? Without those answers, the number is just a small piece of a much bigger and messier picture.