The US military budget is billions.
Nobody makes sacrifices to Baduhenna. You might spend a hundred dollars to get a huge military advantage by making sacrifices to Baduhenna.
If you shut up and calculate a 0.0001% change for Baduhenna to exist might be enough to change actions.
A lot of people vote in presidential elections when the chance of their vote turning the election is worse than 0.0001%. If the chance of turning an election through voting was 0.00000000000001% nobody would go to vote.
There are probably various Xrisks with 0.0001% chance of happening. Separating them from Xrisks with 0.00000000000001% chance of happening is important.
My point is that we can't shut up and calculate with probabilities of 0.0001% because we can't reliably measure or reason with probabilities that small in day-to-day life (absent certain very carefully measured scientific and engineering problems with extremely high precision; e.g. certain cross-sections in particle physics).
I know I assign very low probability to Baduhenna, but what probability do I assign? 0.0001% 0.000001% less? I can't tell you. There is a point at which we just say the probability is so close to zero as to be indistinguishable.
When...
Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are:
And one new rule: