I would suggest that anyone who gave a probability higher than .15 be more arrogant in the future.
This does not mean my assigned probability was 15%. It means, “Even after accounting for fudge factors and people using different numbers to express similar emotional degrees of certainty, if you gave a number higher than FIFTEEN PERCENT it means you’ve got a MAJOR problem with paying WAY too much attention to really lousy evidence, what other people think, and the authority of idiots.”
The most important lesson here has nothing to do with innocence and guilt, but with people’s confidently paraphrasing the opinions of others.
How much the more so when those opinions aren’t saved as text, both to give the interpreters another chance to parse properly and to introduce the possibility that they could be embarrassed if later shown wrong.
This does not mean my assigned probability was 15%. It means, “Even after accounting for fudge factors and people using different numbers to express similar emotional degrees of certainty, if you gave a number higher than FIFTEEN PERCENT it means you’ve got a MAJOR problem with paying WAY too much attention to really lousy evidence, what other people think, and the authority of idiots.”
The most important lesson here has nothing to do with innocence and guilt, but with people’s confidently paraphrasing the opinions of others.
How much the more so when those opinions aren’t saved as text, both to give the interpreters another chance to parse properly and to introduce the possibility that they could be embarrassed if later shown wrong.