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kalium comments on Open thread for January 1-7, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I won't deny that significant figures are a crap implementation of the principle I'm talking about. But you have to propagate the uncertainty and include it, in some way, in your final answer, either numerically or via some explanation that might let me figure out how precise your answer is.
Don't say "1% probability of FAI success by 2100." Say ".01-10% probability of FAI success by 100 based on XYZ." Or if there's no numerical process behind it that can support even a range like that, just say "FAI success by 2100 seems unlikely."
Agreed. Though in the latter case you might still do best to give numbers: "Somewhere around 1%, but this is a wild guess so don't take it too seriously." This is not the same statement as the corresponding one with 2% instead of 1%, even though both might be reasonably accurately paraphrased as "unlikely" or even "very unlikely".