So to summarize that case study criticism: everything you factchecked was accurate and you have no evidence of any kind that the Fermi story does not mean what O/Y interpret it as.
I find this a slightly odd sentence. My “fact-check” was literally just quoting and thinking about Ord’s own footnote. So it would be very odd if that resulted in discovering that Ord was inaccurate. This connects back to the point I make in my first comment response: this post was not a takedown.
My point here was essentially that:
I think the main text of Ord’s book (without the footnote) would make a reader think Fermi’s forecast was very very wrong.
But in reality it is probably better interpreted as very very poorly communicated (which is itself relevant and interesting), and either somewhat wrong or well-calibrated but unlucky.
I do think the vast majority of people would think “remote possibility” means far less than 10%.
I find this a slightly odd sentence. My “fact-check” was literally just quoting and thinking about Ord’s own footnote. So it would be very odd if that resulted in discovering that Ord was inaccurate. This connects back to the point I make in my first comment response: this post was not a takedown.
My point here was essentially that:
I think the main text of Ord’s book (without the footnote) would make a reader think Fermi’s forecast was very very wrong.
But in reality it is probably better interpreted as very very poorly communicated (which is itself relevant and interesting), and either somewhat wrong or well-calibrated but unlucky.
I do think the vast majority of people would think “remote possibility” means far less than 10%.