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CronoDAS comments on Advancing Certainty - Less Wrong
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What are the odds that, given that I didn't make a mistake pressing the buttons, that my electronic calculator (which appears to be in proper working order) will give a wrong answer on a basic arithmetic problem that it should be able to solve?
With all the caveats, I'd guess somewhere south of one in ten thousand. I would expect the biggest terms by far in the error rate to be:
User error.
Design fault.
Mechanical failure (e.g. solder bump fracture, display damage).
I'd like to know some estimates of probability that high-energy radiation can affect a calculation, but pretty much everything after 1 is highly unlikely.
Presumably you're imagining something like a year-old calculator, solar powered and in bright light, reported in good working order and tested on a few problems with known answers, doing aritmetic on integers less than 10,000 in magnitude. Just to close as many of the doors as possible...
Shouldn't have to do that here.
That's a technique useful when arguing against an idea.
CronoDAS' comment contained just a question; it's not obvious to me what the “idea” is we should be arguing against.