Skatche comments on Techniques for probability estimates - Less Wrong

58 Post author: Yvain 04 January 2011 11:38PM

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Comment author: endoself 05 January 2011 12:15:48AM 6 points [-]

I think most of these have the same limitation. When the numbers are to big, such as 1000 comparable cases or a 1 in 1000 chance, the human brain cannot intuitively grasp what to do. We are really only optimized for things in a central range (and, obviously, not even that under many circumstances). Rarer events, at least ones that do not occur in aggregate, do not produce sufficient optimization pressures. At some point, all the hard parts must be reduced to purely mathematical questions. If you can actually think of 10 corresponding situations, or remember the average of 100 past situations, you can use that, but picturing yourself dealing with 10 000 of something does not feel very different than picturing 100 000.

Comment author: Skatche 06 January 2011 12:43:11AM 2 points [-]

A technique I use to get around this problem is to think in terms of orders of magnitude. What you can do is ask yourself (for example) about being in ten corresponding situations, then ask yourself about that (i.e. the set of ten situations) happening ten times, then about that happening ten times. This is also, with a little practice, an effective way to develop a visceral (and accordingly mind-blowing) sense of cosmic/microscopic scales, long periods of time, and so forth - cf. the Powers of Ten video.