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

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

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Comment author: selylindi 03 November 2011 05:08:23AM 7 points [-]

Survey taken.

I had fun doing the background research to be able to give a number to the P(Aliens) questions. :) The topic has, of course, come up many times, but never before for me in association with a community where the social norms favored a careful, quantitative answer.

When answering the Newton question, I was surprised at the shape of my probability distribution for the answer. It definitely wasn't a gaussian, a uniform distribution, or other form that I've worked with. This was simply due to the knowledge I started with, which was vague propositions rather than measurements. (i.e. I knew the right century and had a good idea when Newton was born, but didn't know when he died.) I'm quite curious what the distribution of responses will be for the year, since a historical date is the sort of thing we'd expect humans to make errors on, but not gaussian errors.

Comment author: occlude 03 November 2011 05:22:28AM 3 points [-]

I had fun doing the background research to be able to give a number to the P(Aliens) questions.

I enjoyed this too. Tried to calibrate Aliens 1 with Aliens 2, and found that what seemed like a modest estimate for Aliens 2 (still a shot in the dark due to too many Drake unknowns, but what the hell) created an enormous probability estimate for Aliens 1. More convinced than ever that we are not alone.