The relevant number to use in the calculation you’re making isn’t the 6 billion people inhabiting the world, but the people that actually claim to have made such a stunning breakthrough: since that’s what instigates us to want to evaluate the claim in the first place, the fact that he made it.
In short not:
P(X made a stunning breakthrough|X is an alive human being)
but rather:
P(X made a stunning breakthrough|X claims to have made a stunning breakthrough)
As a rough guess I’d say 1⁄100 (or atleast 1/1000) may be far closer in regards to prior probabilities than 1⁄10,000,000.
The relevant number to use in the calculation you’re making isn’t the 6 billion people inhabiting the world, but the people that actually claim to have made such a stunning breakthrough: since that’s what instigates us to want to evaluate the claim in the first place, the fact that he made it.
In short not:
P(X made a stunning breakthrough|X is an alive human being)
but rather:
P(X made a stunning breakthrough|X claims to have made a stunning breakthrough)
As a rough guess I’d say 1⁄100 (or atleast 1/1000) may be far closer in regards to prior probabilities than 1⁄10,000,000.