= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Kingreaper comments on Best career models for doing research? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (999)
I don't see how very unlikely events that people knew the probability of would have been part of the evolutionary environment at all.
In fact, I would posit that the bias is most likely due to having a very high floor for probability. In the evolutionary environment things with probability you knew to be <1% would be unlikely to ever be brought to your attention. So not having any good method for intuitively handling probabilities between 1% and zero would be expected.
In fact, I don't think I have an innate handle on probability to any finer grain than ~10% increments. Anything more than that seems to require mathematical thought.
Probably less than 1% of cave-men died by actively seeking out the sabre-toothed tiger to see if it was friendly. But I digress.
But probably far more than 1% of cave-men who chose to seek out a sabre-tooth tiger to see if they were friendly died due to doing so.
The relevant question on an issue of personal safety isn't "What % of the population die due to trying this?"
The relevant question is: "What % of the people who try this will die?"
In the first case, rollerskating downhill, while on fire, after having taken arsenic would seem safe (as I suspect no-one has ever done precisely that)