How Our Universe Came To Be
"How Our Universe Came To Be" (with warmup feature "Guessing With Precision") Was: "Guessing With Precision, And Other Odd Bits Of Impropriety" (Episode X of "Writing More Than I Know") Some people like to guess with precision. I'm one of them. For example, when I set the microwave timer I intuitively think: One-and-a-half minutes? That feels too short. 1:45? Okay. And then as I'm setting the timer, I feel 1:45 is too much, and I adjust downward to 1:42. Not that I really know the ideal time; it's just an intuitive guess influenced by the size of the chunk of potato that I'm cooking or just some feeling I have. Or, as an other example, if you ask me how long it will take to do something, I might say: 4 minutes. Most people will give a conventional round number like 5 minutes or "a minute" or instead opt for a vagary like "soon" or "a few minutes". But I will sometimes sa...