steven0461 comments on The Importance of Self-Doubt - Less Wrong
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The 1-in-a-billion follows not from it being plausible that there are three such events, but from it being virtually certain. Models without such events will end up dominating the final probability. I can easily imagine that if I magically happened upon a very reliable understanding of some factors relevant to future FAI development, the 1 in a billion figure would be the right thing to believe. But I can easily imagine it going the other way, and absent such understanding, I have to use estimates much less extreme than that.
I'm having trouble parsing your comment. Could you clarify?
A billion is not so big a number. Its reciprocal is not so small a number.
Edit: Specifically, what's "it" in "it being virtually certain." And in the second sentence -- models of what, final probability of what?
Edit 2: -1 now that I understand. +1 on the child, namaste. (+1 on the child, but I just disagree about how big one billion is. So what do we do?)
"it being virtually certain that there are three independent 1 in 1000 events required, or nine independent 1 in 10 events required, or something along those lines"
Models of the world that we use to determine how likely it is that Eliezer will play a critical role through a FAI team. Final probability of that happening.
A billion is big compared to the relative probabilities we're rationally entitled to have between models where a series of very improbable successes is required, and models where only a modest series of modestly improbable successes is required.