Alicorn comments on PredictionBook: A Short Note - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 10 November 2011 03:10PM

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Comment author: Alicorn 10 November 2011 10:29:57PM 2 points [-]

But how does PredictionBook help with that over a little text file where I would write things like "60%: That fleebs are spruckled by 2012; that thus-and-such experiment confirms that glox is a form of spolk; that abritsens are publicly repudiated by Mr. Blafwem before such time as he resigns" or whatever things I might actually be disposed to register predictions about?

Comment author: gwern 11 November 2011 12:05:30AM *  6 points [-]

Graphing is pretty nice to have, as it fixes a rather more-than-trivial inconvenience; I'm not sure even I care enough to figure out how to munge a raw text file into a proper calibration graph (generated using... what, GraphViz? I don't even know where to start) to look at and go 'oh, I'm really underconfident in the 10/90% range, why is that?'

Comment author: JoshuaZ 10 November 2011 10:32:25PM *  2 points [-]

It doesn't help that aspect that directly at all.

Although I think having the ability to see what other people have predicted helps prevent lies to oneself especially of the form "well, that was just a black swan". When someone else predicted the other direction or simply had much reduced confidence one isn't able to say that.