The question was about an event related to a well-known figure in world history. So even if you literally have no idea, your best guess for that reference class is “sometime between the year 0 and 2000”. The middle of this range is 1000. The probability that this should come within 15 years of the correct answer by sheer luck is about 1 in 100.
However, it just isn’t true that you didn’t have a clue. Given the name of the person and even a very rough idea who they were I’m pretty sure any LW reader could do considerably better than that; at the least narrow it down to a couple or maybe three centuries, for a 1 in 20 chance.
Yup; the only Principia Mathematica I’d ever heard of was the one by Russel and Whitehead. I leveraged this shocking lack of knowledge into a guess that Newton lived after Galileo and before Gauss, and put down 10% on 1750; which by the rule of thumb HonoreDB came up with puts me right on the edge of overconfidence.
Yeah. I got all panicky when I encountered the question (“Argh! Newton! How can I have nothing memorized about someone as important as Newton!”). By somewhat similar reasoning I got an answer and assigned about 1⁄3 probability to my being within 15 years. I ended up within 10 years of the correct answer. By HonoreDB’s rule that would be neither over- nor underconfident. But on discovering the answer I couldn’t help thinking, “rats—I should have been more confident”. I get a sense that thinking about scoring rules too much as a game can also lead to some biases.
For one thing, you have no problem with the survey’s designer “presuming” that the other questions in the survey are valuable; why do you reverse that judgement only in the case of the question that troubles you?
For another, your rejection was based on the lack of a “not a clue” option, and you haven’t refuted my point that this option would be punting.
It’s possible that the reason I’m bothered by your dismissal is that I ended up spending more time on this one question than the rest of the survey altogether.
You would come across as more sincere if you just said “I couldn’t be bothered to answer that question”.
That’s punting.
The question was about an event related to a well-known figure in world history. So even if you literally have no idea, your best guess for that reference class is “sometime between the year 0 and 2000”. The middle of this range is 1000. The probability that this should come within 15 years of the correct answer by sheer luck is about 1 in 100.
However, it just isn’t true that you didn’t have a clue. Given the name of the person and even a very rough idea who they were I’m pretty sure any LW reader could do considerably better than that; at the least narrow it down to a couple or maybe three centuries, for a 1 in 20 chance.
Yup; the only Principia Mathematica I’d ever heard of was the one by Russel and Whitehead. I leveraged this shocking lack of knowledge into a guess that Newton lived after Galileo and before Gauss, and put down 10% on 1750; which by the rule of thumb HonoreDB came up with puts me right on the edge of overconfidence.
Yeah. I got all panicky when I encountered the question (“Argh! Newton! How can I have nothing memorized about someone as important as Newton!”). By somewhat similar reasoning I got an answer and assigned about 1⁄3 probability to my being within 15 years. I ended up within 10 years of the correct answer. By HonoreDB’s rule that would be neither over- nor underconfident. But on discovering the answer I couldn’t help thinking, “rats—I should have been more confident”. I get a sense that thinking about scoring rules too much as a game can also lead to some biases.
I said that “I do not believe they add anything”, so no point engaging in the games where someone presumes that they do.
That sounds like a bad faith answer to me.
For one thing, you have no problem with the survey’s designer “presuming” that the other questions in the survey are valuable; why do you reverse that judgement only in the case of the question that troubles you?
For another, your rejection was based on the lack of a “not a clue” option, and you haven’t refuted my point that this option would be punting.
It’s possible that the reason I’m bothered by your dismissal is that I ended up spending more time on this one question than the rest of the survey altogether.
You would come across as more sincere if you just said “I couldn’t be bothered to answer that question”.