It is about half as likely as a US soldier in Iraq over the last decade will be killed or too badly injured to return to duty (generally estimated to be around 9%).
Who exactly?
"One is always," said Bertrand, "a shirker to some one else."
"That's true; no matter what you call yourself, you'll always---always--find worse blackguards and better blackguards than yourself."
"All those that never go up to the trenches, or those who never go into the first line, and even those who only go there now and then, they're shirkers, if you like to call 'em so, and you'd see how many there are if they only gave stripes to the real fighters."
"There are two hundred and fifty to each regiment of two battalions," said Cocon.
"There are the orderlies, and a bit since there were even the servants of the adjutants."--"The cooks and the under-cooks."--"The sergeant-majors, and the quartermaster-sergeants, as often as not."--"The mess corporals and the mess fatigues."--"Some office-props and the guard of the colors."--"The baggage-masters." "The drivers, the laborers, and all the section, with all its non-coms., and even the sappers."--"The cyclists." "Not all of them."--"Nearly all the Red Cross service."--"Not the stretcher-bearers, of course; for they've not only got a devilish rotten job, but they live with the companies, and when attacks are on they charge with their stretchers; but the hospital attendants."
"Nearly all parsons, especially at the rear. For, you know, parsons with knapsacks on, I haven't seen a devil of a lot of 'em, have you?"
"Nor me either. In the papers, but not here."
"There are some, it seems."--"Ah!"
"Anyway, the common soldier's taken something on in this war."
"There are others that are in the open. We're not the only ones."
"We are!" said Tulacque, sharply; "we're almost the only ones!"
He added, "You may say--I know well enough what you'll tell me--that it was the motor lorries and the heavy artillery that brought it off at Verdun. It's true, but they've got a soft job all the same by the side of us. We're always in danger, against their once, and we've got the bullets and the bombs, too, that they haven't. The heavy artillery reared rabbits near their dug-outs, and they've been making themselves omelettes for eighteen months. We are really in danger. Those that only get a bit of it, or only once, aren't in it at all. Otherwise, everybody would be. The nursemaid strolling the streets of Paris would be, too, since there are the Taubes and the Zeppelins, as that pudding-head said that the pal was talking about just now."
"In the first expedition to the Dardanelles, there was actually a chemist wounded by a shell. You don't believe me, but it's true all the same--an officer with green facings, wounded!"
"That's chance, as I wrote to Mangouste, driver of a remount horse for the section, that got wounded--but it was done by a motor lorry."
"That's it, it's like that. After all, a bomb can tumble down on a pavement, in Paris or in Bordeaux."
"Oui, oui; so it's too easy to say, 'Don't let's make distinctions in danger!' Wait a bit. Since the beginning, there are some of those others who've got killed by an unlucky chance; among us there are some that are still alive by a lucky chance. It isn't the same thing, that, seeing that when you're dead, it's for a long time."
--Le Feu (Under Fire), translation.
Who exactly?
Oh. Hmm. I don't remember where I saw this but that number is my background fact set. But when I look at the actual numbers this is clearly false. There have been around 30,000 people wounded or killed. (Source) and around a million who have served. That means that the probability of being wounded or killed at all is around .03, which is much smaller, and that's even before the fact that I said wounded severely enough that one can't keep fighting. Also in retrospect my number was obviously too high. Severe failure of rationality on my part. Ugh.
Continuing my interest in tracking real-world predictions, I notice that the recent acquittal of Knox & Sollecito offers an interesting opportunity - specifically, many LessWrongers gave probabilities for guilt back in 2009 in komponisto’s 2 articles:
Both were interesting exercises, and it’s time to do a followup. Specifically, there are at least 3 new pieces of evidence to consider:
Point 2 particularly struck me (the press attributes much of the acquittal to the expert report, an acquittal I had not expected to succeed), but other people may find the other 2 points or unmentioned news more weighty.
2 Probabilities
I was curious how the consensus has changed, and so, in some spare time, I summoned all the Conscientiousness I could and compiled the following list of 54 entries based on those 2 articles’ comments (sometimes inferring specific probabilities and possibly missing probabilities given in hidden subthreads), where people listed probabilities for Knox’s guilt, Sollecito’s guilt, and Guede’s guilt:
It’s interesting how many people assign a high-probability to Knox being guilty; I had remembered LW as being a hive of Amanda fans, but either I’m succumbing to hindsight bias or people updated significantly after those articles. (For example, Eliezer says .15 is too high, but doesn’t seem otherwise especially convinced; and later one reads in Methods of Rationality that "[Hagrid] is the most blatantly innocent bystander to be convicted by the magical British legal system since Grindelwald's Confunding of Neville Chamberlain was pinned on Amanda Knox.")
EDIT: Jack graphed the probability against karma:
2.1 Outliers
If we look just at >41% (chosen to keep contacts manageable), we find 12 entries out of 54:
I have messaged each of them, asking them to comment here, describing if and how they have since updated, and any other thoughts they might have. (I have also messaged the first 12 commenters or so, chronologically, with <41% confidence in Knox’s guilt, with the same message.) The commenters:
AngryParsley / Cyan / Daniel_Burfoot / Eliezer_Yudkowsky / GreenRoot / John_Maxwell_IV / LauraABJ / Mario / Matt_Simpson / Morendil / Psychohistorian / Shalmanese / Threads / Unknowns / badger / bentarm / bgrah449 / bigjeff5 / brazil84 / dilaudid / jimmy / kodos96 / lordweiner27 / mattnewport / nerzhin / tut
I look forward to seeing their retrospectives, or indeed, anyone's retrospectives on the matter.