An ordinary connotation of “How many X are there?” is that there aren’t any well-known reasons for there to be no X at all. If I ask you how many apples there are and you later find out that it’s actually a maple tree outside, then you would likely consider me not to be communicating in good faith — to be asking the question to make a point rather than to actually obtain information about apples.
I get your point. To add further weight to it, the snippet above is from an informal, likely fast paced IM conversation. Which makes considered analysis pedantic and socially uncalibrated.
That said, I found the 10 to 1000 estimate surprising.
The person asking the question hasn’t seen the tree.
He is merely picking one out of the woods.
Say a tree has 100 apples. Come late autumn any apples will fall, to ten, to one, and then to none.
The fact that ordinary apple trees ordinarily have no apples at least raises the possibility.
0 to 1000 apples would certainly be correct. Which is what we want.
How many dollars are in my wallet? (I haven’t looked.)
[09:02] X: i’ve never seen it and neither have you
[09:02] Eliezer: 10 to 1000
I don’t know what it is, exactly, about that exchange… but I have a rather souring reaction to it. I mean, it seems somewhat… I don’t know the term, contrary comes closest but definitely isn’t correct; as though when someone insists on using numerical responses to a statement “in order to prevent confusion” and then admits that doing so is as likely to induce confusion—well, it seems like such a thing is rather non-fruitful.
Is it really so hard to say “There is insufficient data for a meaningful reply”?
It’s a calibration
test, which is
(more or less) a test of how well you judge the accuracy of your guesses. How
accurate your guess itself was is not important here except when judged in the
light of the confidence level you assigned to the 15-years-either-way
confidence interval.
Except for people who happened to have the year of [redacted event]
memorized, everyone’s answer to the first of these two questions was a
guess. Some people’s guesses were more
educated than others, but the
important part is not the accuracy of the guess, but how well the accuracy of
the guess tracks the confidence level.
“‘I Don’t Know’” is a relevant Sequence post:
(Here’s the “Rerunning the Sequences” page.)
The next line should be:
Apple trees have zero apples most of the time.
Non-apple trees have no apples all of the time.
The quoted estimate sounds poorly calibrated and likely wrong.
An ordinary connotation of “How many X are there?” is that there aren’t any well-known reasons for there to be no X at all. If I ask you how many apples there are and you later find out that it’s actually a maple tree outside, then you would likely consider me not to be communicating in good faith — to be asking the question to make a point rather than to actually obtain information about apples.
I get your point. To add further weight to it, the snippet above is from an informal, likely fast paced IM conversation. Which makes considered analysis pedantic and socially uncalibrated.
That said, I found the 10 to 1000 estimate surprising.
The person asking the question hasn’t seen the tree. He is merely picking one out of the woods.
Say a tree has 100 apples. Come late autumn any apples will fall, to ten, to one, and then to none.
The fact that ordinary apple trees ordinarily have no apples at least raises the possibility.
0 to 1000 apples would certainly be correct. Which is what we want.
How many dollars are in my wallet? (I haven’t looked.)
I don’t know what it is, exactly, about that exchange… but I have a rather souring reaction to it. I mean, it seems somewhat… I don’t know the term, contrary comes closest but definitely isn’t correct; as though when someone insists on using numerical responses to a statement “in order to prevent confusion” and then admits that doing so is as likely to induce confusion—well, it seems like such a thing is rather non-fruitful.
Is it really so hard to say “There is insufficient data for a meaningful reply”?
How does guessing the answers add to the rest of the survey?
It’s a calibration test, which is (more or less) a test of how well you judge the accuracy of your guesses. How accurate your guess itself was is not important here except when judged in the light of the confidence level you assigned to the 15-years-either-way confidence interval.
Except for people who happened to have the year of [redacted event] memorized, everyone’s answer to the first of these two questions was a guess. Some people’s guesses were more educated than others, but the important part is not the accuracy of the guess, but how well the accuracy of the guess tracks the confidence level.