I was debating between that and 99.95% or even 99.99%, but 12 9s! Do you understand what that means! Do you really think that you cold make 1 trillion similar claims and only be wrong once? One trillion possible worlds, and it only goes up in one of them?
To put it differently, suppose Warren Buffet comes up to me, and suggests a game. I drop the pen, if it falls, I give him ten cents, otherwise, he gives me everything he owns (about $50 billion). By your estimate, he's ripping me off to the tune of about 5 cents, but I think I would accept the bet, which suggests my estimate is not as high.
Do you really think that you cold make 1 trillion similar claims and only be wrong once?
No, I would run out of statements I was that confident in long before I reached a trillion.
To put it differently, suppose Warren Buffet comes up to me, and suggests a game. I drop the pen, if it falls, I give him ten cents, otherwise, he gives me everything he owns (about $50 billion). By your estimate, he's ripping me off to the tune of about 5 cents, but I think I would accept the bet, which suggests my estimate is not as high.
There are two problems with conver...
Today's post, Some Claims Are Just Too Extraordinary was originally published on 20 January 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was A Fable of Science and Politics, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.