paper-machine comments on 2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: [deleted] 01 November 2011 05:59:01AM *  9 points [-]

I took the survey. I would trust my probabilities for aliens, espers, and time travelers as far as I can throw them. I don't really think any number I could give would be reasonable except in the weak sense of not committing the conjunction fallacy.

I second the anchoring effect in the Singularity question. Based on previous comments I had written before, I would have expected a far more distant year than the one I gave in the survey. Oops.

Also, I missed the Principia question by ten years, and gave myself 80% confidence. I don't know if that was good or bad. How would I go about estimating what my confidence should have been?

I was disappointed that mathematics fell under the "hard sciences", but I suppose we can't all have our own category.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 01 November 2011 09:26:20PM 2 points [-]

The confidence question was "how confident are you that you are within 15 years of the right answer?" which you were. You assigned 80% probability to the true outcome. That's pretty good.