Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Competence in experts: summary - Less Wrong

12 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 16 August 2012 02:53PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 August 2012 12:23:56AM 3 points [-]

I strongly suspect that the primary result of such an algorithm would be very wide error bars on the timeline, and that it would indeed outperform most experts for this reason. You can't get water from a stone, nor narrow estimates out of ignorance and difficult problems, no matter what simple algorithm you use. Though I would be quite intrigued to be proven wrong about this, and I have seen Fermi estimates for quantities like e.g. the mass of the Earth apparently extract narrow and correct estimations out of the sums of multiple widely erroneous steps.

Comment author: A11AF82 17 August 2012 02:18:16AM *  6 points [-]

and I have seen Fermi estimates for quantities like e.g. the mass of the Earth apparently extract narrow and correct estimations out of the sums of multiple widely erroneous steps.

out of how many wrong/wide estimates using the same method?