A coin lands heads ninety-nine times in a row. What's the probability the hundredth flip is tails? The textbook-trained answer is 50/50 — each flip is independent. The correct real-world answer is that the next flip is almost certainly heads too, because a run of 99 heads is overwhelming evidence the coin (or the flipper) is rigged. "Someone clueless in maths would most likely say... hardly any chance [of another head]" and be right; the formally-trained answer is the sucker's answer. The point isn't that probability theory is wrong — it's that applying an idealized model (a fair coin, independent trials) to a situation that violates the model's own assumptions produces a confidently wrong answer. School rewards fluent rule-application over checking whether the rule's preconditions hold, and grades that fluency as intelligence. The credentialing mechanism compounds the error: "the more exams they pass and the more certificates they get, the more they believe they know what they're talking about" — formal success increases confidence without correspondingly testing it against reality. > "The right answer is zero. The 'clueless' person was right... you are being conned. The coin is loaded." --- *Source: [[Gang Fit (Part 1)]] (GuruAnaerobic, self-published 2019) — Ch 6 — The Educated Idiot*