Kaj_Sotala comments on 2011 Survey Results - Less Wrong
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Is such precision meaningful? At least for me personally, 0.1% is about as low as I can meaningfully go - I can't really discriminate between me having an estimate of 0.1%, 0.001%, or 0.0000000000001%.
I expect this is incorrect.
Specifically, I would guess that you can distinguish the strength of your belief that a lottery ticket you might purchase will win the jackpot from one in a thousand (a.k.a. 0.1%). Am I mistaken?
That's a very special case -- in the case of the lottery, it is actually possible-in-principle to enumerate BIG_NUMBER equally likely mutually-exclusive outcomes. Same with getting the works of shakespeare out of your random number generator. The things under discussion don't have that quality.
You're right, good point.
I agree in principle, but on the other hand the questions on the survey are nowhere as easy as "what's the probability of winning such-and-such lottery".