Nornagest comments on 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Less Wrong

88 Post author: Yvain 26 October 2014 06:05PM

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Comment author: Nornagest 23 October 2014 05:29:29PM *  5 points [-]

If you put down a random answer and know you did, then it seems like the correct estimate for your calibration would be 1 over the size of the sample space. Google tells me there are 206 bones in the adult human body, but a lot them are mirrored left to right, so maybe you'd be looking at something just south of 1%?

Probably higher, though, if you filtered out the many small bones in e.g. the fingers and toes, or the vertebrae.

Comment author: 27chaos 23 October 2014 06:08:57PM 4 points [-]

You're assuming the answer I wrote down was an accurate name of a bone.

Comment author: Elund 26 October 2014 10:18:00PM 1 point [-]

Even then your subjective probability wouldn't have been exactly 0. You could have put 0.00000000001 or something like that. The instructions didn't forbid you from using long decimals. Even so, I think it would have been fine to put 0 if your subjective probability really was 0 or you felt like rounding down to it.