peter_hurford comments on 2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey - Less Wrong

77 Post author: Yvain 01 November 2011 06:28PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (694)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: peter_hurford 01 November 2011 03:05:05AM 5 points [-]

I think there is a difference between "I have looked over all the evidence intensely and find the evidence and counter-evidence to weigh precisely in balance such that my estimate of the probability of event X is 50%" and "I don't know anything about X, so I will default to 50% even if it isn't reasonable".

It's the difference between "I know fair coins produce heads 50% of the time" and "what's a fair coin?". I wanted the second option when talking about many worlds -- I just haven't read the sequence on quantum mechanics yet, and I haven't read anything outside the sequences on quantum mechanics either. I just have an educated layman's understanding.