gwern comments on New Year's Prediction Thread (2012) - Less Wrong

20 Post author: gwern 01 January 2012 09:35AM

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Comment author: gwern 03 January 2012 10:12:38PM 6 points [-]

I still think you are about 5% too high on both of those predictions, but at least you aren't being stupid in arriving at your probabilities.

(By the way, if you are wrong, you've done your future self a service by writing this comment - explaining in detail your reasons is one of the few known effective tactics against hindsight bias.)

Comment author: JoachimSchipper 04 January 2012 09:41:21AM *  1 point [-]

A bit off topic, but you seem to be doing this kind of thing a lot: is there any trick for calibrating high-/low-probability events? I can see how to figure out whether my 50% is 50% or 40%, but I'd need to make a lot of predictions to get a statistically useful number of 1% predictions wrong, even if my 1% is really 2% (a serious error!)

Comment author: gwern 04 January 2012 02:52:32PM 2 points [-]

Are there any tricks? Base-rates/frequencies (plus Laplace's law) and breaking down conjunctions (#2 and 3 in http://www.gwern.net/Prediction%20markets#how-i-make-predictions ).

Comment author: mfb 04 January 2012 11:21:13AM 2 points [-]

You can know that your numbers were wrong, if many of the 1-2% predictions become true. But there is no way to find out (by looking at the outcome) whether it was 1% or 2% without several hundred predictions.

Comment author: MixedNuts 07 January 2012 09:58:51PM 0 points [-]

Betting time!

Well, unless your or AspiringKnitter's bid-ask spread is too wide.

Comment author: gwern 07 January 2012 11:00:47PM 0 points [-]

A 5% difference isn't enough to bet on - I don't make bets that often so gambler's ruin becomes an issue.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 04 January 2012 04:31:22AM 0 points [-]

Okay, sure. Thank you. Actually, you might be right. Maybe I did fail to consider certain possibilities that could keep those things from happening how I assumed. Of course, that would be evidence in favor of my other prediction:

90%: the probabilities in this post are poorly calibrated, but things I think are likely will probably happen, and the converse is also true.