I don’t think I’m rationalizing an answer; I’m not even presenting an answer. I meant only to present a (very simplified) example of how such a conclusion might arise.
I’m totally willing to chalk the survey results up to scale insensitivity, but such results aren’t necessarily nonsensical. It could just mean somebody started with “what credence do I assign that aliens exist and the Fermi Paradox is/isn’t an illusion” and worked backwards from there, rather than pulling a number out of thin air for “chance of life developing in a single galaxy” and then exponentiating.
Since the latter method gives sharply differing results depending on whether you make up a probability a few orders of magnitude above or below 10^-11, I’m not sure working backwards is even a worse idea. At least working backwards won’t give one 99.99999% credence in something merely because their brain is bad at intuitively telling apart 10^-8 and 10^-14.
Edit: I think some degree of dichotomy is plausible here. A lot of intermediate estimates are ruled out by us not seeing aliens everywhere.
Sorry I misunderstood. (Oops) I agree (see my edits in the previous comment). A justify dichotomy is more probable than I initially thought, and probably less people made a scale insensitivity bias than I initially thought.
I don’t think I’m rationalizing an answer; I’m not even presenting an answer. I meant only to present a (very simplified) example of how such a conclusion might arise.
I’m totally willing to chalk the survey results up to scale insensitivity, but such results aren’t necessarily nonsensical. It could just mean somebody started with “what credence do I assign that aliens exist and the Fermi Paradox is/isn’t an illusion” and worked backwards from there, rather than pulling a number out of thin air for “chance of life developing in a single galaxy” and then exponentiating.
Since the latter method gives sharply differing results depending on whether you make up a probability a few orders of magnitude above or below 10^-11, I’m not sure working backwards is even a worse idea. At least working backwards won’t give one 99.99999% credence in something merely because their brain is bad at intuitively telling apart 10^-8 and 10^-14.
Edit: I think some degree of dichotomy is plausible here. A lot of intermediate estimates are ruled out by us not seeing aliens everywhere.
Sorry I misunderstood. (Oops) I agree (see my edits in the previous comment). A justify dichotomy is more probable than I initially thought, and probably less people made a scale insensitivity bias than I initially thought.