The Doomsday Calculation:How an Equation that Predicts the Future Is Transforming Everything We Know About Life and the Universe

By William Poundstone

Some scientists have long predicted the end of the world. By nuclear war, or environmental disaster, or rouge AI, or...

This book goes into these calculations, their history and the substance behind them.

They are usually based on "Self Sampling" statistics augmented by a Bayesian math. The anthropic principal is a great example-- all laws of physics must support the creation of a universe that allows for observers (like humans) to exist, otherwise the observers wouldn't be around. For example, if the universe was 2 dimensional, or 4 dimensional, then gravity would behave very differently and we wouldn't exist.

Then there is also the Lindy effect-- when you randomly meet an object (or person, or process) on average you will have met that object half way through it's lifetime. If you know how long the object has existed so far, then you can predict the full life time of the object.

But garbage in, garbage out. Sometimes this math can be used to justify bull shit. Maybe your analysis is wrong. Maybe you are missing something.

So much of this is subject to opinion. Like "What is the probability of a rouge AI taking over the earth? ala Terminator."

You never really know until its too late. 

The Mother Tongue- English And How It Got That Way

By Bill Bryson

English is a very messy language. It regularly absorbs words and idioms from other language. It's still growing, evolving. No one standardizes it.

Unfortunately, this makes for a messy history. There are so many adhoc influences, that that there is no overarching narrative that that helps your reason through it.

Maybe that's the conclusion-- English is messy and will continue to be messy.

Some things from the book that I want to remember...

Older class systems sometimes pop up in English. Consider that in England farmers and chefs were different classes. You can see what foods the upper class ate, because they used different words than the lower class....

Cows become beef and veal.
Pigs become pork and bacon.
Sheep become lamb and mutton.
Goose and ducks become fowl.
Deer becomes venison
Chicken stays chicken.

Yes, chicken was not ate by the upper classes.

"Set it up"
"Set it down"

To someone learning English, these two phrases would appear to be opposites, yet that is not true.  English is almost malicious to foreign learners in its ability to come up with these problems.

What is the difference between these two sentences?
"My suffering is terrible."
"I am suffering terribly."

Or these three?
"It's time for lunch."
"It's the time for our lunch."
"It's our time for a lunch."

While there are lots of rules to English grammar. They are at best a descriptive interpretation by people who care. Fundamentally, most English is spoken by feel. Grammar rules are there to try and help you find sentence structures that will probably make the English feel right.