LessWrong2h agoenergy 122

Probability ranges are a cop-out with 90–93% probability

It feels like this post on LessWrong should mostly be preaching to the choir, but I have seen enough rationalists post probability ranges (mainly elsewhere) that maybe it is worth writing. The probability of an event is not an objective fact about the world; it is a fact about your subjective uncertainty of it. Hence, if you're not sure what the probability of something is, this is not because the world has some secret information that you don't have access to (the fact that you're estimating the probability in the first place is because of that), but because you just can't be bothered to put together all the relevant info you have and properly estimate and/or calculate the probability based on it. In a sense, not knowing what you need to take into account or how to do the math are just factors that add uncertainty to your world model, not something that stops you from estimating precise probabilities. If you really don't have any info whatsoever, such as if you have to estimate the probability of an event that is described to you in a language you don't speak so you don't even know what you're estimating, the probability is simply 50%, and any additional info you gain lets you upd

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