Daniel_Starr comments on Pascal's Muggle: Infinitesimal Priors and Strong Evidence - Less Wrong

43 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 May 2013 12:43AM

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Comment author: Daniel_Starr 07 May 2013 10:22:29PM *  0 points [-]

This seems like an exercise in scaling laws.

The odds of being a hero who save 100 lives are less 1% of the odds of being a hero who saves 1 life. So in the absence of good data about being a hero who saves 10^100 lives, we should assume that the odds are much, much less than 1/(10^100).

In other words, for certain claims, the size of the claim itself lowers the probability.

More pedestrian example: ISTR your odds of becoming a musician earning over $1 million a year are much, much less than 1% of your odds of becoming a musician who earns over $10,000 a year.