shminux comments on Rationality Quotes May 2013 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: katydee 03 May 2013 08:02PM

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

Comments (387)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: ChristianKl 03 May 2013 03:03:18PM 0 points [-]

You shouldn't trust a human person who makes that claim. But if we are using 'person' in a way that includes the steel-Vulcan from the quote then yes, you should.

There inherent uncertainity in the input. The steel-Vulcan in question counted one specifc case as being 24% relevant to the current question. That's two digits of accuracy.

If many of your input variables only have two digits of accuracy the end result shouldn't have four digits of accuracy.

Comment author: shminux 03 May 2013 03:54:23PM *  6 points [-]

It's not about accuracy, it's about not privileging 3700 over 3745. Neither is a particularly round number in, say, binary, and omitting saying "forty five" after converting this number into decimal system for human consumption is not much of a time saver.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 May 2013 08:22:30AM 0 points [-]

But re-mentioning the “forty five” after a human asks you “three thousand seven hundred?” is mostly pointless nitpicking, and demonstrates a lack of understanding of human (well, at least, of neurotypical human) psychology IMO.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 04 May 2013 05:01:45PM 11 points [-]

Either that, or it reflects an accurate understanding of the things that humans (justifiably or otherwise) treat as signals of authoritative knowledge. I mean, there's a reason people who want to sound like experts quote statistics to absurd levels of precision; rounding off sounds less definitive to most people.