What do you think the relation between the mental category of "certainty" and probability is?

For the primitive it is not true that "the sun will rise with 100% certainty" - it is simply "certain that the sun will rise." What's more, I think these statements are -not equivalent-.

For the "educated westerner" it is true that "the sun will rise with certainty very close to 100%, given some assumptions about the nature of the universe in earth's neighborhood." Certainty is not a necessity any longer.

My claim would be that, for most, heuristic descriptions of possibility/probability and an understanding of the mathematical laws or probability are absolutely disjoint. The reason that you can even think about low probability events is not mere knowledge - you must actually switch the context in which you are framing the problem - you must "step back" and examine the lottery in the context of theory in which you (rightly) believe.

What I'm saying here is that arguing against -heuristic descriptions- with -actual probabilities- (even if just approximations) is like arguing against a shaman's perception of the weather with modern supercomputer-driven approximations. You have to consider that people have an investment in their heuristic descriptions - to leave them would be like to leave a nice warm place which makes you happy (most of the time) but might have some nagging problems (e.g. playing the lottery).

Ya dig?