But I think that in most cases, the base rate is too powerful to ignore. To put this concretely: you may show me a handful of people in their 60s doing interesting things, and a smaller handful of people in their 70s doing interesting things, and argue that age isn’t as big a deal if you are an outlier. But I’ll point out that the percentages fall as the decades go up, and that you cannot know that you are an outlier until you reach those ages. Respecting the base rate simply means that I do not think I will be very different from them. Respecting the base rate means that — while in some specific ways I think I am different and unique — in all the other ways, I believe that I am not so different after all.