I would point out that humans can only count to about 7 (without taking advantage of symmetry). We only have about that many intuitive levels of probability. For example you give “between 25% and 40% probability”, I’d guess that humans have an emotional(?) level of probability that’s kinda like 1⁄4 and another kinda like 2⁄5 and you don’t actually feel good about either so you have to hedge. The suggestion that we only have a few quantum levels of probability dovetails nicely with how rationalists get condemned by many people for giving arbitrarily high probabilities that aren’t 100% - humans have a “certainty” level, but no level that’s certainty minus epsilon so rationalists tend to come off as relatively unconfident when we give nuanced probabilities. Asking why we can’t give intuitive numerical probabilities is pretty stupid, we had to invent numbers—they’re not in the source code.
I would point out that humans can only count to about 7 (without taking advantage of symmetry). We only have about that many intuitive levels of probability. For example you give “between 25% and 40% probability”, I’d guess that humans have an emotional(?) level of probability that’s kinda like 1⁄4 and another kinda like 2⁄5 and you don’t actually feel good about either so you have to hedge. The suggestion that we only have a few quantum levels of probability dovetails nicely with how rationalists get condemned by many people for giving arbitrarily high probabilities that aren’t 100% - humans have a “certainty” level, but no level that’s certainty minus epsilon so rationalists tend to come off as relatively unconfident when we give nuanced probabilities. Asking why we can’t give intuitive numerical probabilities is pretty stupid, we had to invent numbers—they’re not in the source code.
A nitpick: that’s subitizing, not counting.