RichardKennaway comments on Voting is like donating thousands of dollars to charity - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Academian 05 November 2012 01:02AM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 05 November 2012 08:53:28AM *  6 points [-]

$100 billion, $700 billion, $7 trillion. They all feel more or less the same, which of course, is absolutely insane. When I look at the numbers, it just feels like "a lot".

Think of "billion" as being just the name of a unit, like an inch, or a light-year. You have 100, 700, or 7000 units. Do they still feel the same?

Comment author: ygert 19 November 2012 08:01:46PM 2 points [-]

Yeah, of course, I understand about the problem of scope insensitivity and how to try to avoid it. My point was that before reading this article, I did not think of it like that, but rather just looked at that number and thought "a lot". Reading this article made me understand that I was being scope insensitive, and that let me put everything into perspective, in a similar manner to the method you stated. The big problem with biases like this isn't compensating for them once you identify them, but rather identifying them in the first place.