HalFinney comments on "I don't know." - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 December 2006 06:27PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (16)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: HalFinney 22 December 2006 12:31:48AM 2 points [-]

Is it reasonable to distinguish between probabilities we are sure of, and probabilities we are unsure of? We know the probability that rolling a die will get a 6 is 1/6, and feel confident about that. But what is the probability of ancient life on Mars? Maybe 1/6 is a reasonable guess for that. But our probabilistic estimates feel very different in the two cases. We are much more tempted to say "I don't know" in the second case. Is this a legitimate distinction in Bayesian terms, or just an illusion?