Verbal Behavior, the Weather Man, and the Fundamental Lie of Professional Poker

I am reading Skinner's Verbal Behavior for the first time with my undergraduate class. It is amazingly good. The only criticism I would make thus far is that it is tinted throughout with the quirkiness of Skinner's particular brand of behaviorism, which is to be expected. Anyone who is trying to do language in an embodied or ecological context, who hasn't read this book and picked out the important points, should do so post haste. The next time I go through the book, a blog book-club will definitely be in order.

One question that my students raised early on struck at a fundamentally important point in modern intellectual development. What, they asked, does Skinner mean by:

Our basic datum is not the occurrence of a given response as such, but the probability that it will occur at a given time.

The idea that science is interested in probability, and not certainty, is still foreign to most people. However, it is a crucial idea, that permeates our modern world. Two great examples are found in the attitude of the professional weatherman and the professional poker player, both of which are poorly understood.