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STL comments on How confident are you in the Atomic Theory of Matter? - Less Wrong
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How confident are you in the existence of cats?
This is a colossal waste of time.
If you don't mind the question: How confident are /you/ in the existence of cats?
The reason I ask, is that I'm still trying to train myself to think of probability, evidence, confidence, and similar ideas logarithmically rather than linearly. 10 decibans of confidence means 90% odds, 20 decibans means 99%, 30 means 99.9%, and so on. However, 100% confidence in any proposition translates to an infinite number of decibans - requiring an infinite amount of evidence to achieve. So far, the largest amount of confidence given in the posts here is about 100 decibans... and there is a very large difference between '100 decibans' and 'infinite decibans'. And that difference has some consequences, in terms of edge cases of probability estimation with high-value consequences; which has practical implications in terms of game theory, and thus politics, and thus which actions to choose in certain situations. While the whole exercise may be a waste of time for you, I feel that it isn't for me.
How much evidence do you have that you can count accurately (or make a corect request to computer and interpret results correctly)? How much evidence that probability theory is a good description of events that seem random?
Once you get as much evidence for atomic theory as you have for the weaker of the two claims above, describing your degree of confidence requires more efforts than just naming a number.