Will_Newsome comments on Abnormal Cryonics - Less Wrong

56 Post author: Will_Newsome 26 May 2010 07:43AM

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Comment author: Will_Newsome 26 May 2010 03:46:32PM 0 points [-]

I wasn't using a normal distribution in my original formulation, though: the mean of the picture in my head was around 1 in a million with a longer tail to the right (towards 100%) and a shorter tail to the left (towards 0%) (on a log scale?). It could be that I was doing something stupid by making one tail longer than the other?

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 27 May 2010 03:03:13AM 0 points [-]

It would only be suspicious if your resulting probability were a sum of very many independent, similarly probable alternatives (such sums do look normal even if the individual alternatives aren't).