Is there a name of the thing where an event happens and that specific event is somewhat surprising, but overall you would have expected something in that reference class (or level of surprisingness) to happen?
E.g. It was pretty surprising that Ivanka Trump tweeted about Situational Awareness, but I sort of expect events this surprising to happen.
In a forecasting context, you could treat it as a kind of conservation of evidence: you are surprised, and would have been wrong, in the specific prediction of ‘Ivanka Trump will not tweet about short AI timelines’, but you would have been right, in a way which more than offsets your loss, for your implied broader prediction of ‘in the next few years, some highly influential “normie” politicians will suddenly start talking in very scale-pilled ways’.
(Assuming that’s what you meant. If you simply meant “some weird shit is gonna happen because it’s a big world and weird shit is always happening, and while I’m surprised this specific weird thing happened involving Ivanka, I’m no more surprised in general than usual”, then I agree with Jay that you are probably looking for Law of Large Numbers or maybe Littlewood’s Law.)
The Improbability Principle sounds close. The summary seems to suggest law of large numbers is one part of the pop science book, but admittedly some of the other parts (“probability lever”) seem less relevant
I’ve always referred to that as the Law of Large Numbers. If there are enough chances, everything possible will happen. For example, it would be very surprising if I won the lottery, but not surprising if someone I don’t know won the lottery.
I propose “token surprise” (as in type-token distinction). You expected this general type of thing but not that Ivanka would be one of the tokens instantiating it.
Is there a name of the thing where an event happens and that specific event is somewhat surprising, but overall you would have expected something in that reference class (or level of surprisingness) to happen?
E.g. It was pretty surprising that Ivanka Trump tweeted about Situational Awareness, but I sort of expect events this surprising to happen.
In a forecasting context, you could treat it as a kind of conservation of evidence: you are surprised, and would have been wrong, in the specific prediction of ‘Ivanka Trump will not tweet about short AI timelines’, but you would have been right, in a way which more than offsets your loss, for your implied broader prediction of ‘in the next few years, some highly influential “normie” politicians will suddenly start talking in very scale-pilled ways’.
(Assuming that’s what you meant. If you simply meant “some weird shit is gonna happen because it’s a big world and weird shit is always happening, and while I’m surprised this specific weird thing happened involving Ivanka, I’m no more surprised in general than usual”, then I agree with Jay that you are probably looking for Law of Large Numbers or maybe Littlewood’s Law.)
The Improbability Principle sounds close. The summary seems to suggest law of large numbers is one part of the pop science book, but admittedly some of the other parts (“probability lever”) seem less relevant
I’ve always referred to that as the Law of Large Numbers. If there are enough chances, everything possible will happen. For example, it would be very surprising if I won the lottery, but not surprising if someone I don’t know won the lottery.
This is sort of what “calibration” means. Maybe you could say the event is “in-calibration”.
I propose “token surprise” (as in type-token distinction). You expected this general type of thing but not that Ivanka would be one of the tokens instantiating it.