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DeVliegendeHollander comments on Open thread, Mar. 2 - Mar. 8, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: MrMind 02 March 2015 08:19AM

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Comment author: G0W51 03 March 2015 01:23:15AM *  15 points [-]

Perhaps it would be beneficial to use a unary numeral system when discussing topics on which biases like scope insensitivity, probability neglect, and placing too much weight on outcomes that are likely to occur. Using a unary numeral system could prevent these biases by presenting a more visual representation of the numbers, which might give readers more intuition on them and thus be less biased about them. Here’s an example: “One study found that people are willing to pay $80 to save || * 1000 (2,000) birds, but only $88 to save |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| * 1000 (200,000 birds).”

Edit: Made it a bit easier to read.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 March 2015 11:04:57AM 6 points [-]

A unary number system is a really fancy name to an ASCII graph :)

Reminds me of the "irony meter" some of my friends use instead of smilies, as smilies are binary, while this can express that something is almost but but not quite serious: [...........|.....]