Despite the fact that my opinion on the case has hardly changed at all, these posts—and thinking about the case in general—were a tremendous learning experience for me. Some of the lessons include:
Less Wrong is good at getting the right answer. Believe it or not, the strong survey consensus in favor of innocence—prior to my second post—came as something of a pleasant surprise to me. You don’t find this in many other places, despite the fact that the case is a no-brainer. I had assumed there would be more wishy-washiness and probabilities close to 50% than there turned out to be. (There was some of this, but less than I expected.)
People in general are bad at getting the right answer. As shown by the original verdict, not to mention all the numerous pro-guilt commentators on internet forums and elsewhere. What’s surprising about that? Not much, perhaps, but I would say that one thing that is important about it is that it shows that huge, glaring errors of judgement are not restricted to Far Mode. Even on a mundane question such as this, people are susceptible to strange cognitive biases that can severely distort their assessment of evidence.
Confidence should depend on how much you know. I erred twice during the original sequence of posts on the case: once when I implied that participants in my survey ought to have come up with numbers like mine (0.001), and then again when I reacted to the indignation that followed by downgrading my own confidence. In truth, because (even before the verdict) I had followed the case more than most LW readers, my level of confidence should have been higher than most readers’. For someone who spends ten minutes reading the two sites I linked to, 0.9 probability of innocence (as opposed to 0.99) is perfectly reasonable; whereas someone like me should expect to be more confident, even if only on account of the meta-information that any additional information not on those sites isn’t particularly relevant.
What’s surprising about that? Not much, perhaps, but I would say that one thing that is important about it is that it shows that huge, glaring errors of judgement are not restricted to Far Mode.
To the extent that I use that nomenclature I would have called this judgement to be a far mode one. It is the throwing about of far mode political abstractions to achieve perceived near mode goals. Those near mode goals have very little to do with the guilt or innocence of the victim (Amanda) and a lot to do with how your political utterance (“She’s a witch! Burn her!”) will be perceived by your peers.
Yes, we seem to have quite different understandings of what these terms (“near”, “far”, “political”) mean.
An example of (erroneous) “near” reasoning in my usage would be: “Amanda is guilty because there had to be multiple attackers because there were so many wounds on the victim”.
Whereas an example of (erroneous) “far” reasoning would be: “Amanda is guilty because f**ck those arrogant imperialist Americans trying to tell us how to run our country”.
In truth, because (even before the verdict) I had followed the case more than most LW readers, my level of confidence should have been higher than most readers’.
True while we’re uncertain of your rationality. But at this point I find you reliable enough to think that your confidence is what mine would be if I followed the case as closely as you. And that means I’m just going to adopt your probability estimate.
Well, of course, at the time in question no one knew what my probability estimate was; I merely meant that they need not have reached 0.999 confidence from a few minutes of browsing.
Despite the fact that my opinion on the case has hardly changed at all, these posts—and thinking about the case in general—were a tremendous learning experience for me. Some of the lessons include:
Less Wrong is good at getting the right answer. Believe it or not, the strong survey consensus in favor of innocence—prior to my second post—came as something of a pleasant surprise to me. You don’t find this in many other places, despite the fact that the case is a no-brainer. I had assumed there would be more wishy-washiness and probabilities close to 50% than there turned out to be. (There was some of this, but less than I expected.)
People in general are bad at getting the right answer. As shown by the original verdict, not to mention all the numerous pro-guilt commentators on internet forums and elsewhere. What’s surprising about that? Not much, perhaps, but I would say that one thing that is important about it is that it shows that huge, glaring errors of judgement are not restricted to Far Mode. Even on a mundane question such as this, people are susceptible to strange cognitive biases that can severely distort their assessment of evidence.
Confidence should depend on how much you know. I erred twice during the original sequence of posts on the case: once when I implied that participants in my survey ought to have come up with numbers like mine (0.001), and then again when I reacted to the indignation that followed by downgrading my own confidence. In truth, because (even before the verdict) I had followed the case more than most LW readers, my level of confidence should have been higher than most readers’. For someone who spends ten minutes reading the two sites I linked to, 0.9 probability of innocence (as opposed to 0.99) is perfectly reasonable; whereas someone like me should expect to be more confident, even if only on account of the meta-information that any additional information not on those sites isn’t particularly relevant.
(More comments possibly to be added later...)
To the extent that I use that nomenclature I would have called this judgement to be a far mode one. It is the throwing about of far mode political abstractions to achieve perceived near mode goals. Those near mode goals have very little to do with the guilt or innocence of the victim (Amanda) and a lot to do with how your political utterance (“She’s a witch! Burn her!”) will be perceived by your peers.
Yes, we seem to have quite different understandings of what these terms (“near”, “far”, “political”) mean.
An example of (erroneous) “near” reasoning in my usage would be: “Amanda is guilty because there had to be multiple attackers because there were so many wounds on the victim”.
Whereas an example of (erroneous) “far” reasoning would be: “Amanda is guilty because f**ck those arrogant imperialist Americans trying to tell us how to run our country”.
True while we’re uncertain of your rationality. But at this point I find you reliable enough to think that your confidence is what mine would be if I followed the case as closely as you. And that means I’m just going to adopt your probability estimate.
Well, of course, at the time in question no one knew what my probability estimate was; I merely meant that they need not have reached 0.999 confidence from a few minutes of browsing.
(Thanks for the compliment, in any case!)