printing-spoon comments on More Cryonics Probability Estimates - Less Wrong
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To me this just looks like a bias-manipulating "unpacking" trick - as you divide larger categories into smaller and smaller subcategories, the probability that people assign to the total category goes up and up. I could equally make cryonics success sound almost certain by lumping all the failure categories together into one or two big things to be probability-assigned, and unpacking all the disjunctive paths to success into finer and finer subcategories. Which I don't do, because I don't lie.
Also, yon neuroscientist does not understand the information-theoretic criterion of death.
How do you know the raised estimate with this "trick" is worse than the estimate without?
I could just as easily say, "As you merge smaller categories into larger and larger categories, the probability that people assign to the total category goes down."