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MBlume comments on The Modesty Argument - Less Wrong
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In the Verizon case, George can apply the modesty argument and still come up with the conclusion that he is almost certainly right.
He needs to take into account two things: (1) what other people besides Verizon think about the distinction between .002 dollars and .002 cents, and (2) what is the likelihood that Verizon would admit the mistake even if they know there is one.
Admitting the mistake and refunding one customer might as well have the consequence of having to refund tens of thousands of customers and losing millions of dollars. Even if that's the upstanding and right thing to do for the company, each individual customer support rep will fear that their admitting the facts will lead to them being fired. People whose jobs are at stake will do their best to bluff a belief that .002 == 0.00002, even if they don't actually believe that's the case.
This hypothesis is testable. Unless you're a trained liar, your voice should be measurably different when you're explaining the obvious fact that .002 ==.00002 and when you're claiming that .002=.00002 while your internal monologue is going "shit, shit, he's right, isn't he? We really fucked this one up, we're going to lose thousands, and they're going to blame me." We have audio, so someone trained in such analysis should be able to give us an answer.