ChristianKl comments on Creating a Text Shorthand for Uncertainty - Less Wrong

6 Post author: ozziegooen 19 October 2013 04:46PM

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Comment author: ChristianKl 19 October 2013 05:39:10PM *  10 points [-]

The IPCC has a nice mapping from words to probabilities that they use when talking about global warming claims:

In this Summary for Policymakers, the following terms have been used to indicate the assessed likelihood, using expert judgement, of an outcome or a result: Virtually certain > 99% probability of occurrence, Extremely likely > 95%, Very likely > 90%, Likely > 66%, More likely than not > 50%, Unlikely < 33%, Very unlikely < 10%, Extremely unlikely < 5%.

Comment author: jmmcd 19 October 2013 10:40:34PM 0 points [-]

I like the principle, but 5% is "extremely unlikely"? Something that happens on the way to work once every three weeks?

Comment author: ChristianKl 19 October 2013 11:18:16PM 2 points [-]

I like the principle, but 5% is "extremely unlikely"? Something that happens on the way to work once every three weeks?

It can be a bit scary, but in a lot of domains that's exactly what people mean when they say extremly unlikely.

It's extremly unlikely that humans aren't responsible for global warming.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 October 2013 03:50:00PM 2 points [-]

It can be a bit scary,

And it's not even as scary as people saying “beyond a reasonable doubt” to mean something like ‘P > 75%’.

Comment author: gjm 21 October 2013 10:01:49AM 1 point [-]

Which you can see being done by a LW regular in the LW post Thinking Bayesianically, with Lojban. So it's not like this is something no one does, or something only idiots do.

I'm being slightly unfair. The actual figure being described in those terms is nearer to 76%.

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