Grokkist Press Reading Room

Make senseEntangled ValeSnackables

🕵️ Possibly a Serious Possibility

How certain is 'likely'? What about 'possible'? In Cold War intelligence briefings, such phrases — what CIA analyst Sherman Kent called 'lurking weasels' — meant wildly different things to different people: one official read 'serious possibility' as 20%, another as 80%. Adam Kucharski trac

Danu Poyner

· 1 minute

Possibly a serious possibility
kucharski.substack.com

How certain is 'likely'? What about 'possible'? In Cold War intelligence briefings, such phrases — what CIA analyst Sherman Kent called 'lurking weasels' — meant wildly different things to different people: one official read 'serious possibility' as 20%, another as 80%. Adam Kucharski traces the enduring problem of fuzzy estimates, from spycraft to courtrooms, and why precision in language matters most when uncertainty is unavoidable.

Written by

Danu Poyner

Danu is a writer and founder of Grokkist, a learning community in the deepest sense. His work centres on coherence, curiosity, and helping people make sense of themselves in relation to ideas, experience, and one another.

More from Danu Poyner ↗ Everyone who writes here ↗

Filed in the Reading Room

Register

A reading of this piece

What is this? ↗

The Press's reading, not a score. Nothing here is better at one end than the other. See the whole Press mapped ↗

Writing like this grows in company

Hear when the next one is out.

Which letters
What's the difference?

The Grokkist letter is Danu's monthly letter about the whole Grokkist community: what people are making and thinking about, gatherings coming up, and a handful of Snackables, small good things worth your time.

The Press sends you new writing from this site as it's published (essays, talks, stories, books in instalments), plus a monthly letter from the editor. You can narrow it to the Realms you care about.

Choose either or both. Each email has a one-click way out.

Only send me Press pieces from (leave all off for everything)
What are the Realms?

Every piece in the Press lives in one or two Realms: regions of the Grokkist world, each asking for a different kind of attention. Pick the ones that draw you, and you'll only hear about pieces from those.

  • Unfolding Realm: identity and becoming
  • Entangled Vale: shared inquiry and making sense together
  • Maker's Forge: creative expression
  • Soma Isles: the body and embodied practice
  • Wild Margin: changemaking and possibility
  • Hearthlands: community and connection

Wander the Realms ↗

One click to leave, any time. We never share your address.

Check your inbox: there's a link to confirm. Then you're in.

That didn't go through. Try again, or write to [email protected].

In good company

Replies from signed-in readers. They open in their own space, so you can sit with the piece first.

Keep reading

Nearby on the shelf.