rule_and_line comments on 2014 Survey Results - Less Wrong

87 Post author: Yvain 05 January 2015 07:36PM

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

Comments (279)

Sort By: Popular

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

Comment author: rule_and_line 07 January 2015 03:44:47AM 0 points [-]

I'm having difficulty replacing your quotation with its referent. Could you describe an activity I could do that would demonstrate that I was judging how much evidence I have on a given issue?

Comment author: Username 07 January 2015 10:13:38AM *  0 points [-]

Make money playing poker, maybe?

Comment author: rule_and_line 08 January 2015 02:39:50PM 0 points [-]

Ah! That sounds like a great one!

So, folks like Chris Ferguson are presumably doing both activities (judging how much evidence as well as accurately translating brain estimates to numerical estimates).

But if I go find a consistently successful poker player who does not translate brain estimates to numerical estimates, then I could see how that person does on calibration exercises. That sounds like a fun experiment. Now I just need to get the grant money ...

Sidenote, but how would I narrow down to the successful poker players who don't translate brain estimates to numerical estimates? I mean, I could always ask them up front, but how would I interpret an answer like "I don't really use numbers all that much. I just go by feel." Is that a brain that's translating brain-based estimates to numerical estimates, then throwing away the numbers because of childhood mathematical scarring? Or is that a brain that's doing something totally outside translating brain-based estimates to numerical estimates?