DataPacRat comments on Open thread, Nov. 09 - Nov. 15, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Seeking mathematician for story's analysis
While I'm writing a story where a character tries to solve a problem using meta-uncertainty, I know a useful trick is to treat uncertainty on a logarithmic scale rather than a linear one, as that comes closer to usefully representing how increasing evidence increases certainty.
I'm working with a problem where the character's reasoning process itself is questionable, and so it's uncertain that the calculated most-accurate-possible level uncertainty is actually the most accurate possible level. I'm guessing that it may be useful to treat the calculated level of uncertainty as a normal Guassian distribution, with the X scale measured in logarithmic confidence units (" decibans ").
Converting the graph from a logarithmic scale to a linear one would seem to do interesting things. Using some rules of thumb and guesstimation, my current draft of the relevant paragraph reads:
If this character then consulted an actual mathematician, how much correction would be needed to turn this approach into a useful certainty estimate?
Thank you for your time.