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prase comments on An Anchoring Experiment - Less Wrong Discussion

12 Post author: prase 01 April 2011 02:19PM

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Comment author: prase 01 April 2011 02:27:41PM *  -2 points [-]

Part 2, group II question:

What is the altitude of the highest point in Sweden?

Give an estimate in a subcomment. Please begin your answer with "I suppose the correct value is probably" or some other preface of comparable length; if you write just the number, it appears in the Recent Comments bar and can bias other respondents.

Comment author: [deleted] 02 April 2011 03:50:04AM *  1 point [-]

I suppose the correct value is probably 5000 km.

I had no idea what a reasonable height for a mountain might be, but I did half-remember a quote from the Spanish dub of Jurassic Park III about K2 being between x000 km and 9000 km. I knew that K2 was the 2nd highest mountain on the planet, so I thought Sweden's own highest mountain might be quite a bit smaller and therefore wrote down 5000 km as my guess. Except that, lo and behold, it turns out that I misremembered meters as kilometers! Great, now I'm gonna have the most inaccurate answer in this subthread... so much for my attempt to at least be in the correct order of magnitude.

Comment author: prase 03 April 2011 08:44:55PM 1 point [-]

5000 kilometres ?

Comment author: [deleted] 03 April 2011 09:23:24PM 1 point [-]

Yes, 5000000 meters. Like I said, I didn't realize I had screwed up until I looked at the other posts, which was after I had written my answer down.

Comment author: gjm 03 April 2011 09:30:42PM 0 points [-]

I don't know anything about Sweden, nor about geology, so I will not be surprised to find that the following is very wrong. I guess that the highest point in Sweden is about 1800m above sea level.

Comment author: Mystfan 03 April 2011 01:09:41AM 0 points [-]

I'd guess around 8,000 feet (I seem to recall Sweden having only smaller mountains)

Comment author: LastVillaiN 02 April 2011 09:50:04PM 0 points [-]

Oh darn that question, I climbed it last summer.

Rot13: Fyvtugyl zber guna gjb gubhfnaq naq bar uhaqerq zrgref nobir gur frn. Gur zbhagvna vf fuevaxvat.

Comment author: beriukay 02 April 2011 09:10:01AM *  0 points [-]

I suppose the correct value is probably about 10,000 feet. I base it on not knowing much about Sweden, but seeing bumps on maps, and guessing that they don't have anything any bigger than 2/3 of Mt. McKinley, which probably served as an anchor for me, so I'm not sure if I actually belong in group II any more.

Edit: The number I guessed was actually closer to half a McKinley. So much for memory.

Comment author: jschulter 02 April 2011 05:59:26AM 0 points [-]

I suppose the correct value is probably around 3000 m.

I know of no large mountains to be found in Sweden, so I'm guessing what seems to be a reasonably low number.

Comment author: Nic_Smith 02 April 2011 01:45:54AM 0 points [-]

My guess of the answer to this question, bearing in mind that I haven't studied geography since elementary school and am very unsure at to the order of magnitude, is 3600 feet.

Comment author: Nic_Smith 02 April 2011 02:08:49AM 0 points [-]

Some notes on my reasoning:

I was originally going to guess an answer of 10000 feet on the basis that I vaguely remembered a Nickleback song indicating that commercial airplanes go up even higher, but thought without looking that the lyrics might have been "join the mile high club at 20000 feet" and so disregarded this answer as biased (but apparently the lyrics to "Rock Star" are "37000 feet" instead, so this was a mistake). I then figured that 6x the height of the Sears Tower would be a somewhat reasonable height for a mountain, and thought that the Tower was either 300ft or 600ft tall, eventually deciding on 600ft (actual height: 1451ft). 6(600) = 3600.

Comment author: kpreid 02 April 2011 12:06:56AM 0 points [-]

I have no concrete preexisting knowledge about the scale of altitudes, or the geography of Sweden, including whether or not it contains mountains. I am therefore somewhat arbitrarily choosing one-half of the value which Wikipedia labels “high altitude”, namely 1200 meters. I also note that on first reading I missed “the highest point” and worked on answering the typical occupied altitude of Sweden, and had some confusion with Switzerland.

Comment author: radical_negative_one 01 April 2011 11:49:08PM 0 points [-]

I suppose the correct value is probably...

I'm trying to remember anything about the geography of Sweden and i'm drawing a blank. Hmm, i know that the highest mountains in the continental US are about 14,000 feet. I remember the highest mountains in Europe are a few thousand feet higher than that, but i think those were probably in the Alps. At the moment i can't remember hearing much about famous Scandinavian mountain ranges, but then again they could be higher than anything in the continental US and still not be as famous as the Alps, right? For the sake of having an answer i'll guess about 14,000ft.

Comment author: Pavitra 01 April 2011 11:48:40PM 0 points [-]

I suppose the correct value is probably..................here are many characters for padding............... 100 meters above sea level.

Comment author: ShardPhoenix 01 April 2011 11:28:30PM 0 points [-]

No idea, but my impression of Sweden isn't very mountainous so I'll guess 3000m (~10000 feet)

Comment author: gwern 01 April 2011 11:08:12PM 0 points [-]

I would guess somewhere around 12,000 feet.

Comment author: RobinZ 01 April 2011 09:34:01PM 0 points [-]

Thinking about the question in the context of my current education on geography (a disturbingly large portion of which is from the 1632 series of books), I would imagine that Sweden includes some reasonably tall mountains - but not record-breakingly tall. As ignorant as I am, I'm going to use 5000 feet as a benchmark for an ordinary mountain, and guess 12,000 feet.

Comment author: orangecat 01 April 2011 07:14:00PM 0 points [-]

Knowing virtually nothing about the geography of Sweden, I'll guess 10,000 feet.

Comment author: FAWS 01 April 2011 07:01:08PM 0 points [-]

Probably in the low four digit meter range, I guess 1200m.

Comment author: rwallace 01 April 2011 06:22:05PM 0 points [-]

I looked at a map some years ago, but I don't really remember it. I think it's a bit more mountainous than Ireland or Scotland, so I'm going to guess 1500 m.

Comment author: Benquo 01 April 2011 06:00:45PM 0 points [-]

i suppose the correct value is probably 10,000 feet.

Comment author: Nornagest 01 April 2011 05:42:39PM *  0 points [-]

If I remember right, the Scandinavian peninsula is rugged but not particularly mountainous in absolute terms, and the Swedish part is less so than the Norwegian. Yrg'f fnl friragrra uhaqerq naq svsgl zrgref.

Edit: Rot13'd.

Comment author: KenChen 01 April 2011 05:33:30PM 0 points [-]

I seem to recall that Sweden is "somewhat mountainous", so I suppose that the correct value is around 2000m.

Comment author: [deleted] 01 April 2011 05:25:17PM 0 points [-]

I accidentially looked at the first comment, so my guess could be already biased, however, I think I remember that I hat a rough figure already in my head when I saw the other number, so probably the guess is still valid. I think 1500 m

Comment author: endoself 01 April 2011 05:19:52PM *  0 points [-]

I suppose the correct value is about 5 km.

Comment author: cata 01 April 2011 05:07:52PM 0 points [-]

I guess that the highest point in Sweden is probably about 1000 feet above sea level.

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 01 April 2011 04:41:31PM 0 points [-]

Let's see, how would I go about guessing? I forget if Sweden is supposed to be mountainous, and looking up stuff is probably outside the intent of the experiment, so... I'll give a range. Probably between 500ft and 10,000ft. If you want, for the purposes of the experiment, a single number, let's say 5000ft.

Comment author: Plasmon 01 April 2011 04:15:06PM 0 points [-]

I suppose the correct value is ... 1800m

Comment author: Khoth 01 April 2011 04:07:02PM 0 points [-]

3500feet.

Comment author: [deleted] 01 April 2011 04:01:07PM *  0 points [-]

I guess the following number:

5000 feet

Comment author: EStokes 01 April 2011 03:41:14PM 0 points [-]

1000 ft

Comment author: Manfred 01 April 2011 03:28:42PM 0 points [-]

7000 ft

(about 7/3 km)

Comment author: Dan_Moore 01 April 2011 02:54:20PM 0 points [-]

500 meters

Comment author: falenas108 02 April 2011 01:10:22AM -1 points [-]

Absolutely no idea what the answer is, so I'll guess 2000 feet.

Comment author: Eneasz 01 April 2011 08:04:30PM -1 points [-]

No clue, but anchoring off my state and adjusting downward on the belief that it's a high-than-average state: 10,000 feet