If that is what your point was then I actually disagree with it. I am not comfortable giving odds of 1:999 after looking briefly at two biassed webpages and a wikipedia page that you tell me is fluctuating at the whims of editorial bias. I know damn well I’d be wrong more than once if I did something like that 1,000 times
What if I tried putting it this way: people underestimate the (potential) power of applying rationality techniques as compared with gathering more raw information. It is sometimes possible to be extremely confident about a proposition after an hour of Internet research, even when people who have spent a year “gathering evidence” seem to disagree shaprly.
What if I tried putting it this way: people underestimate the (potential) power of applying rationality techniques as compared with gathering more raw information. It is sometimes possible to be extremely confident about a proposition after an hour of Internet research, even when people who have spent a year “gathering evidence” seem to disagree sharply.
Totally agree, and that’s a point that you explained convincingly in your post. Just so long as I don’t have to quantise ‘extremely confident’ as 0.999. Although given an hour and also given that the lesswrong.com discussion is now part of ‘the Internet’, I expect I would break the 0.99 mark at least.
What if I tried putting it this way: people underestimate the (potential) power of applying rationality techniques as compared with gathering more raw information. It is sometimes possible to be extremely confident about a proposition after an hour of Internet research, even when people who have spent a year “gathering evidence” seem to disagree shaprly.
Totally agree, and that’s a point that you explained convincingly in your post. Just so long as I don’t have to quantise ‘extremely confident’ as 0.999. Although given an hour and also given that the lesswrong.com discussion is now part of ‘the Internet’, I expect I would break the 0.99 mark at least.