Oh, look honey: more proof wine tasting is a crock:

A French court has convicted 12 local winemakers of passing off cheap merlot and shiraz as more expensive pinot noir and selling it to undiscerning Americans, including E&J Gallo, one of the United States' top wineries.

Cue the folks claiming they can really tell the difference...

Part of the problem stems from different uses of the word "caution".

There are a range of possible outcomes for the earth's climate (and the resulting cost in lives and money) over the next century ranging from "everything will be fine" to "catastrophic"; there is also uncertainty over the costs and benefits of any given intervention. So what should we do?

Some say, "Caution! We don't know what's going to happen; let's not change things too fast. Keep our current policies and behaviors until we know more."

Others say, "Caution! We don't know what's going to happen, and we're already changing things (the atmosphere) very quickly indeed. We need to move quickly politically and economically in order to slow down that change."

For most people it seems that caution means: assume things will continue on more or less the same and be careful about changing your behavior, rather than seek to avoid a high risk of catastrophic loss.

Discussions about runaway AI often take a similar turn. People will come up with a list of reasons why they think it might not be a problem: maybe the humain brain already operates near the physical limit of computation; maybe there's some ineffable quantum magic thingy that you need to get "true AI"; maybe economics will continue to work just like it does in econ 101 textbooks and guarantee a soft transition; maybe it's just a really hard problem and it will be a very long time before we have to worry about it.

Maybe. But there's no good reason to believe any of those things are true, and if they aren't, then we have a serious concern.

Personally, I think it's like we're driving blindfolded with the accelerator pressed to the floor. There's a guy in the other seat who says he can see out the window, and he's yelling "I think there's a cliff up ahead--slow down!" We're suggesting he not be too hasty.

But I can see the other side, too: if we radically changed policy every time some crank declared that doom was at hand, we'd be much worse off.

Another form of argumentus interruptus is when the other suddenly weakens their claim, without acknowledging the weakening as a concession

I used to do this quite often. Usually in personal conversations rather than online, because I would get caught up in trying to win. I didn't really notice I was doing it until I heard someone grumbling about such behavior and realized I was among the guilty. Now I try to catch myself before retreating, and make sure to acknowledge the point.

So not much to add, other than the encouraging observation that people can occasionally improve their behavior by reading this sort of stuff.

It seems like you missed one hypothesis: maybe you're mistaken about the people in question, and they actually never were all that intelligent. They achieved their status via other means. It's an especially plausible error because they have high status--surely they must have got where they are by dint of great intellect!

Define a "representative" item sample as one coming from a study containing explicit statements that (a) a natural environment had been defined and (b) the items had been generated by random sampling of this environment.

Can you elaborate on what this actually means in practice? It doesn't make much sense to me, and the paper you linked to is behind a paywall.

(It doesn't make much sense because I don't see how you could rigorously distinguish between a "natural" or "unnatural" environment for human decision-making. But maybe they're just looking for cases where experimenters at least tried, even without rigor?)

Serious nitpicking going on here. The whole point of my post is that from the information provided, one should arrive at probabilities close to what I said.

I don't have appreciably more info than many who participated in my survey, and certainly not more than the jury in Perugia.

I believe Hanson's paper on 'Bayesian wannabes' shows that even only partially rational agents must agree about a lot.

I think there's another, more fundamental reason why Aumann agreement doesn't matter in practice. It requires each party to assume the other is completely rational and honest.

Acting as if the other party is rational is good for promoting calm and reasonable discussion. Seriously considering the possibility that the other party is rational is certainly valuable. But assuming that the other party is in fact totally rational is just silly. We know we're talking to other flawed human beings, and either or both of us might just be totally off base, even if we're hanging around on a rationality discussion board.

I was unfamiliar with the case. I came up with: 1 - 20% 2 - 20% 3 - 96% 4 - probably in the same direction, but no idea how confident you were.

From reading other comments, it seems like I put a different interpretation on the numbers than most people. Mine were based on times in the past that I've formed an opinion from secondhand sources (blogs etc.) on a controversial issue like this, and then later reversed that opinion after learning many more facts.

Thus, about 1 time in 5 when I'm convinced by a similar story of how some innocent person was falsely convicted, then later get more facts, I change my mind about their innocence. Hence the 20%.

I don't think it's correct to put any evidential weight on the jury's ruling. Conditioning on the simple fact that thier ruling is controversial screens off most of its value.