Jiro comments on The dangers of zero and one - Less Wrong

27 Post author: PhilGoetz 21 November 2013 12:21PM

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Comment author: Jiro 03 December 2013 03:19:39PM -1 points [-]

This immediately struck me as so very wrong. The worse you can measure, the more events you feel justified assigning zero probability?

Assigning more events zero probability leaves you worse off compared to someone who makes accurate estimates, but it doesn't necessarily leave you worse off compared to someone else who measures as poorly as you and makes poorly estimated measurements..

It's a way of mitigating the damage by not being able to measure well. You're still worse off than a person who can measure well, you're just not as worse off.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 15 January 2014 02:16:35PM 0 points [-]

No. If you'd only ever seen TAAGCC, period, you would NOT have any sort of license to completely rule out the possibility of anything else. Indeed, the probabilities should be nearly even with a little more weight given to that particular observation.

Applying the Sunrise formula seems appropriate here.