"But all of those uses are secondary to the idea that these are universal Laws governing uncertainty, whether or not you're thinking about them explicitly and using them explicitly, whether or not your implicit reasoning is using them correctly.  It's not like you can lose fewer 2s by just thinking in a sort of wordless way about whether your merchant ships are likely to come back.  You still have to send those ships out or not, based on the factors you knew about, and the Law goes on governing the correct relations between factors regardless of whether you have any inkling of what those are."

"The saying in dath ilan is that, even if you don't know the equations of gravity in exquisitely rigorous detail, if you step off a cliff, you'll still fall.  You don't need to know the Law of the material world for it to go on governing rocks, trees, yourself.  The Law of Probability is core to how all thought works; you don't need to think about thought for that Law to go on governing how poorly or badly your thoughts match up to reality.

"You're not exempted from the Law of Probability by guessing in a way that doesn't mention probabilities to yourself - if it feels to you that it's more likely for a rival merchant ship to bring in a cargo of shoes from Absalom than for a rival ship to bring in a cargo of shoes, your mind is still doing a broken thing in light of the Law, whether you're thinking about the Law or not."

"Or for things like looking at my pocketwatch and inferring what time it is, the probabilities may be so close to certain, that they are not worth thinking about; but it is still not a necessary truth that my pocketwatch tells the correct time, and if I reason from what my pocketwatch says, I am in principle operating in the realm of things that happen to be true and not things that are necessarily true and cannot imaginably be violated, and this is the realm of Probability."

"But all of those uses are secondary to the idea that these are universal Laws governing uncertainty, whether or not you're thinking about them explicitly and using them explicitly, whether or not your implicit reasoning is operating correctly.  It's not like you can lose fewer 2s by just thinking in a sort of wordless way about whether your merchant ships are likely to come back.  You still have to send those ships out or not, based on the factors you knew about, and the Law goes on governing the correct relations between factors regardless of whether you have any inkling of what those are."

"The saying in dath ilan is that, even if you don't know the equations of gravity in exquisitely rigorous detail, if you step off a cliff, you'll fall.  You don't need to know the Law of the material world for it to go on governing rocks, trees, yourself.  The Law of Probability is core to how all thought works; you don't need to think about thought for that Law to go on governing how well or poorly your thoughts match up to reality."

"You're not exempted from the Law of Probability by guessing in a way that doesn't mention probabilities to yourself.  If it feels to you that it's more likely for a rival merchant ship to bring in a cargo of shoes from Absalom than for a rival ship to bring in a cargo of shoes, your mind is still doing a broken thing in light of the Law, whether you're thinking about the Law or not, whether you're making up numbers or not."

"Or for things like looking at my pocketwatch and inferring what time it is, the probabilities may be so close to certain, that they are not worth thinking about as probabilities; but it is still not a necessary truth that my pocketwatch tells the correct time, it is not certain.  If I reason from what my pocketwatch says, I am in principle operating in the realm of things that happen to be true, not things that are necessarily true and cannot imaginably be violated; this is the realm of Probability, and my thoughts are then thoughts that work or fail in light of the Law of Probability."

"But all of those uses are secondary to the idea that these are universal Laws governing uncertainty, whether or not you're thinking about them explicitly and using them explicitly, whether or not your implicit reasoning is operating correctly.  It's not like you can lose fewer 2s by just thinking in a sort of wordless way about whether your merchant ships are likely to come back.  You still have to send those ships out or not, based on the factors you knew about, and the Law goes on governing the correct relations between factors regardless of whether you have any inkling of what those are."

"The saying in dath ilan is that, even if you don't know the equations of gravity in exquisitely rigorous detail, if you step off a cliff, you'll fall.  You don't need to know the Law of the material world for it to go on governing rocks, trees, yourself.  The Law of Probability is core to how all thought works; you don't need to think about thought for that Law to go on governing how well or poorly your thoughts match up to reality."

"You're not exempted from the Law of Probability by guessing in a way that doesn't mention probabilities to yourself.  If it feels to you that it's more likely for a rival merchant ship to bring in a cargo of shoes from Absalom than for a rival ship to bring in a cargo of shoes, your mind is still doing a broken thing in light of the Law, whether you're thinking about the Law or not, whether you're making up numbers or not."

"Or for things like looking at my pocketwatch and inferring what time it is, the probabilities may be so close to certain, that they are not worth thinking about as probabilities; but it is still not a necessary truth that my pocketwatch tells the correct time, it is not certain across every imaginable world.  If I reason from what my pocketwatch says, I am in principle operating in the realm of things that happen to be true in my universe, not things that are always true everywhere.  That is the realm of Probability, and my thoughts are then thoughts that work or fail in light of the Law of Probability."