A useful habit I would recommend to anyone who defaults to answers like “epsilon” is just to try to estimate the number of independent one-in-ten miracles required to make you uncertain.
This turns an exponential scale into a linear scale. Rather than seeing 99.999% and 99.99999% as close together, you just think of them as “five nines” and “seven nines.” Seven nines needs 7⁄5 times more evidence than five nines.
I’ve given “number of nines” types answers to questions about a hundred times and haven’t been surprised by anything I thought was too likely/unlikely, so I’m on track, just give me another couple million years to get better data :P
Perhaps more importantly, I’ve actually taken different actions about things like covid or car safety because of thinking slightly quantitatively, and this has involved probabilities that require about 5 nines. And I guess religion, but that’s overdetermined enough that it doesn’t matter if I have 12 nines or 22 nines of certainty about naturalism.
A useful habit I would recommend to anyone who defaults to answers like “epsilon” is just to try to estimate the number of independent one-in-ten miracles required to make you uncertain.
This turns an exponential scale into a linear scale. Rather than seeing 99.999% and 99.99999% as close together, you just think of them as “five nines” and “seven nines.” Seven nines needs 7⁄5 times more evidence than five nines.
Have you calibrated the numbers that come out of this technique? :whistles_innocently:
I’ve given “number of nines” types answers to questions about a hundred times and haven’t been surprised by anything I thought was too likely/unlikely, so I’m on track, just give me another couple million years to get better data :P
Perhaps more importantly, I’ve actually taken different actions about things like covid or car safety because of thinking slightly quantitatively, and this has involved probabilities that require about 5 nines. And I guess religion, but that’s overdetermined enough that it doesn’t matter if I have 12 nines or 22 nines of certainty about naturalism.
Well if you consciously put down 0.001% (maybe even wrote down your argument) and it happens I’d think you might learn something.
Wait now I think that might have been your point.