Cyan comments on Survey Results - Less Wrong
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Do you wear a seatbelt when you ride in a car? (I'm aware of at least one libertarian who didn't.) The most probable theory is that you won't need to, but even a small chance that it might prevent harm is generally thought to be worth the effort to put it on. Any action you take that fits this pattern qualifies.
I'm happy to report that I have made the decision to wear seat belts without evaluating anything using probability. If the justification is really:
Then you're not explicitly assigning probabilities. Change 'small chance' to '5%' and I'd wonder how you got that number, and what would happen if the chance were 4.99%.
How did you make the decision to wear seat belts then? If it is because you were taught to at a young age, or it is the law, then can you think of any safety precaution you take (or don't take) because it prevents or mitigates a problem that you believe would have less than 50% chance of occurring any particular time you do not take the precaution?
Often we make decisions based on our vague feelings of uncertainty, which are difficult to describe as a probability that could be communicated to others or explicitly analyzed mathematically. This difficulty is a failure of introspection, but the uncertainty we feel does somewhat approximate Bayesian probability theory. Many biases represent the limits of this approximation.
I was arguing against:
with the implicit assumption that "best positions" are about states of the world, and not synonymous with "best decisions".
I guess we need to go back to Z. M. Davis's last paragraph, reproduced here for your convenience: