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

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

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Comment author: BruceyB 02 November 2011 01:52:22AM 10 points [-]

Took it!

For the probability questions, I think it might have been useful for people to be able to specify confidence in their estimate. An estimate of X% from someone who is familiar with almost all of the relevant arguments and evidence is different from an estimate of X% by someone with only a cursory understanding of the issue. Then we can target the subjects people are most uncertain about to produce the most informative discussions.

Comment author: homunq 02 November 2011 08:55:38PM *  3 points [-]

A good bayesian way to make that question quantitative would be, "If we ask you again in 10 years, how much do you expect your number to change? Express your answer as a factor of the percentage or the inverse percentage, whichever is smaller. So 1 would mean you expect no change, and 3 would mean you expect, with about 50% confidence, that your estimate and its inverse will both be more than a third and less than triple of what they are today."

I know that it should really be a matter of p(1-p) but that's close enough.

Oh, and taken, so one of the karma here is for that.

Comment author: selylindi 03 November 2011 04:35:18AM 0 points [-]

If I expect that my estimate will change in the future, why not change it now? I grant that it is highly likely that my estimates will change, but I don't know whether any particular estimate will change upward or downward, so for now they stay put.

I suppose what anticipation of change in a probability estimate practically means is that you expect new pieces of evidence to come in and that you have a fairly good idea what the magnitude of evidence will be, just not the sign.

Comment author: homunq 03 November 2011 11:30:18AM 1 point [-]

I don't know which direction it will change, but for things I'm unsure of I expect more movement than for things I know more about. In bayesian terms, a weak prior.

Comment author: dlthomas 02 November 2011 01:57:56AM 2 points [-]

It would also be very interesting to compare the variance in those with a low certainty with the variance of those with a high certainty.