[corysama]

> The first assertion sounds like an immutable property of human nature

If you are not reading a formal thesis, you should not interpret statements formally. Doing so will only lead to a lifetime of frustration. The author probably agrees with you. The vast majority of the audience probably understands that the author is simply being brief and does not have the "audience attention span" budget to more formally describe the assertion that you take issue with.

My interpretation of the author's intent with the statement "humans can't handle large numbers" is "Large numbers of humans have been presented with large numbers of problems involving large numbers. In practice, the vast majority of them fail. Thus, humanity at large does not handle large numbers well." I.e. "humans" refers to the current mass of humanity, not the theoretical possibilities of an individual.

[ewzimm]

You might be right, but I have seen this trend before without mention that people tend to handle these things badly because of the environments they live in. Most people seem to have pretty poor training when it comes to probability, but the reason for this is presented as an evolutionary trait. I'm sure evolution plays a part, but I think it's mostly in terms of initial, untrained states. When people talk about how people do things because they evolved to do them that way, it sounds like something insurmountable. Humans have been bad at probability for hundreds of thousands of years, so of course they are now. But people are constantly the victim of marketers trying to confuse them with numbers. The lottery is just one of many ways this happens. It's no wonder that people are bad with numbers when there's so much obvious manipulation to try to get people to make irrational purchases. This isn't avoided by the article, but I feel like any mention of a trait people have inherited by evolution needs to be accompanied by an analysis of just how immutable it is. For example, desire for sex or food are pretty difficult to train out of, though not impossible. Poor aptitude with probability is pretty easily remedied. The fact is, not many organizations are motivated to fix it, and lots are more than willing to exploit it.