Anyone who proclaims to be absolutely certain; I suspect that they are in fact not.
Is this a testable assertion? How do you determine whether someone is, in fact, absolutely certain?
It's not unheard of people to bet their life on some belief of theirs.
It's not unheard of people to bet their life on some belief of theirs.
That doesn't show that they're absolutely certain; it just shows that the expected value of the payoff outweighs the chance of them dying.
The real issue with this claim is that people don't actually model everything using probabilities, nor do they actually use Bayesian belief updating. However, the closest analogue would be people who will not change their beliefs in literally any circumstances, which is clearly false. (Definitely false if you're considering, e.g. surgery or cosmic rays; almost certainly false if you only include hypotheticals like cult leaders disbanding the cult or personally attacking the individual.)
Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are: