The Perils of Folk Wisdom
Yesterday, two people told me that “people are talking” that there will be an earthquake soon. It scared me. Am I ready for an earthquake? Maybe I should review the meeting spots. Maybe I should… Then it started to puzzle me. We just had an earthquake drill. No, that wasn’t it, one person assured me. It’s the weather. It has been rather humid here lately and that’s what the weather was like before the 1989 earthquake. I didn’t think to ask: How often has the weather been humid between now and 1989 and no earthquake happened? As I continued to reflect, I realized the perils of folk wisdom: It scares people and it gives false hope of control. Reality is that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Earthquakes happen here, humid weather or not. And reality is that earthquakes are very difficult to predict. That’s why we have the relatively useless official forecast that a big one will hit sometime between now and the next 30 years – something like that, maybe it’s just 20 years but, still, it doesn’t help me to plan to move to non-earthquake country tomorrow, so that I miss the quake on Tuesday, and can come back a week from Tuesday after the essential services are restored. So, why do people think they can predict earthquakes by the humidity (or how the bells ring)? Well, it probably goes along with the line written on the sidewalk in chalk: “Jesus is coming!” He has been expected for the last 2000 years give or take a few decades. Any guest who is that late, shouldn’t really be welcome anymore. So it is with humid weather: If I say earthquakes come with humid weather, chances are that one day an earthquake does indeed happen when it’s humid. This goes back to the difficulty of predicting earthquakes: There is a very large random element in the prediction, so almost anything is possible.
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Bottom line: If you live in an area where earthquakes are likely, you live in an area where earthquakes are likely. Unfortunately, that’s not very useful, so the best thing is to be always prepared, at least a little. Know what to do, know where to go. Have food, water, and medication supplies for at least 72 hours. And then stop worrying about it! If it gets humid, put on a t-shirt. I’ve heard rumors that they sell those even in San Francisco…
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“He has been expected for the last 2000 years give or take a few decades. Any guest who is that late, shouldn’t really be welcome anymore.”
That is the line of the day, I love it! Well done, great post.