This is not a fully general argument against giving very high levels of confidence:
It seems to me we can use the very high confidence levels and our understanding of the area in question to justify ignoring, heavily discounting, or accepting the arguments. We can do this on the basis that it takes a certain amount of evidence to actually produce accurate beliefs.
In the case of the creationist argument, a confidence level of 10^4,478,296 to 1 requires (really) roughly 12,000,000 bits of evidence. (10^4,000,000 =~ 2^12,000,000). The creationist presents these twelve million bits in the form of observations about cells. Now, using our knowledge of biology and cells (specifically, their self-assembling nature, restrictions on which proteins can combine, persistence and reproduction) we can confidently say that observations of cells do not provide 12,000,000 bits of evidence.
I’m not knowledgeable about biology, so I can’t say how many bits of evidence for a creator they provide in this manner but I gather it’s not many. We then adjust the argument’s strength down to that many bits of evidence. In effect, we are discounting the creationist argument for a lack of understanding, and discounting it by exactly how much it lacks understanding.
Applying this to the LHC argument: the argument specifies odds of 10^25 to 1, and the evidence is in the form of cosmic ray interactions not destroying the world. Based on our understanding of the physics involved (including our understanding of the results of Giddings and Mangano), we can say that cosmic ray interactions don’t provide quite as much evidence as the argument claims—but they provide most of the evidence they claimed to (even if we have to resort to our knowledge about white dwarf stars).
I think we should prefer to downgrade the argument from our knowledge about the relevant area rather than hallucinations or simple error, because the prior for ‘our understanding is not complete’ is higher than ‘hallucinating’ and ‘simple error’ put together—and, to put it bluntly, in the social process of beliefs and arguments, most people are capable of completely dismissing arguments from hallucination and simple error, but are far less capable of dismissing arguments from incomplete knowledge.
As for inside / outside the argument, I found it helpful while reading the post to think of the outside view as a probability mass split between A and ~A, and then inside the argument tells us how much probability mass the argument steals for its side. This made it intuitive, in that if I encountered an argument that boasted of stealing all the probability mass for one side, and I could still conceive of the other side having some probability mass left over, I should distrust that argument.
It seems to me we can use the very high confidence levels and our understanding of the area in question to justify ignoring, heavily discounting, or accepting the arguments. We can do this on the basis that it takes a certain amount of evidence to actually produce accurate beliefs.
In the case of the creationist argument, a confidence level of 10^4,478,296 to 1 requires (really) roughly 12,000,000 bits of evidence. (10^4,000,000 =~ 2^12,000,000). The creationist presents these twelve million bits in the form of observations about cells. Now, using our knowledge of biology and cells (specifically, their self-assembling nature, restrictions on which proteins can combine, persistence and reproduction) we can confidently say that observations of cells do not provide 12,000,000 bits of evidence.
I’m not knowledgeable about biology, so I can’t say how many bits of evidence for a creator they provide in this manner but I gather it’s not many. We then adjust the argument’s strength down to that many bits of evidence. In effect, we are discounting the creationist argument for a lack of understanding, and discounting it by exactly how much it lacks understanding.
Applying this to the LHC argument: the argument specifies odds of 10^25 to 1, and the evidence is in the form of cosmic ray interactions not destroying the world. Based on our understanding of the physics involved (including our understanding of the results of Giddings and Mangano), we can say that cosmic ray interactions don’t provide quite as much evidence as the argument claims—but they provide most of the evidence they claimed to (even if we have to resort to our knowledge about white dwarf stars).
I think we should prefer to downgrade the argument from our knowledge about the relevant area rather than hallucinations or simple error, because the prior for ‘our understanding is not complete’ is higher than ‘hallucinating’ and ‘simple error’ put together—and, to put it bluntly, in the social process of beliefs and arguments, most people are capable of completely dismissing arguments from hallucination and simple error, but are far less capable of dismissing arguments from incomplete knowledge.
As for inside / outside the argument, I found it helpful while reading the post to think of the outside view as a probability mass split between A and ~A, and then inside the argument tells us how much probability mass the argument steals for its side. This made it intuitive, in that if I encountered an argument that boasted of stealing all the probability mass for one side, and I could still conceive of the other side having some probability mass left over, I should distrust that argument.