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Lumifer comments on Rationality Quotes Thread December 2015 - Less Wrong
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(To make it clear: I have never seen the movie in question, so this is not a comment on the specifics of what happened) Just because it turned out poorly doesn't make it a bad rule. It could have had a 99% chance to work out great, but the killer is only seeing the 1% where it didn't. If you're killing people, then you can't really judge their rules, since it's basically a given that you're only going to talk to them when the rules fail. Everything is going to look like a bad rule if you only count the instances where it didn't work. Without knowing how many similar encounters the victim avoided with their rule, I don't see how you can make a strong case that it's a bad (or good) rule.
That kinda depends on the point of view.
If you take the frequentist approach and think about limits as n goes to infinity, sure, a single data point will tell you very little about the goodness of the rule.
But if it's you, personally you, who is looking at the business end of a gun, the rule indeed turned out to be very very bad. I think the quote resonates quite well with this.
Besides, consider this. Let's imagine a rule which works fine 99% of the time, but in 1% of the cases it leaves you dead. And let's say you get to apply this rule once a week. Is it a good rule? Nope, it's a very bad rule. Specifically, your chances of being alive at the end of the year are only 0.99^52 = about 60%, not great. Being alive after ten years? About half a percent.