drethelin comments on Elevator pitches/responses for rationality / AI - Less Wrong

17 Post author: lukeprog 02 February 2012 08:35PM

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Comment author: drethelin 02 February 2012 10:35:35PM 8 points [-]

This. I'm skeptical of almost every numerical probability estimate I hear unless the steps are outlined to me.

Comment author: Postal_Scale 03 February 2012 11:36:39PM 3 points [-]

No joke intended, but how much more skeptical are you, percentage-wise, of numerical probability estimates than vague, natural language probability estimates? Please disguise your intuitive sense of your feelings as a form of math.

Ideally, deliver your answer in a C-3PO voice.

Comment author: drethelin 04 February 2012 01:07:27AM 2 points [-]

40 percent.

Comment author: Giles 13 March 2012 07:44:20PM 0 points [-]

This may be one reason why people are reluctant to assign numbers to beliefs in the first place. People equate numbers with certainty and authority, whereas a probability is just a way of saying how uncertain you are about something.

When giving a number for a subjective probability, I often feel like it should be a two-dimensional quantity: probability and authority. The "authority" figure would be an estimate of "if you disagree with me now but we manage to come to an agreement in the next 5 minutes, what are the chances of me having to update my beliefs versus you?"