I think what I’ve probably just demonstrated is that I’m subject to cognitive biases involving small percentage chances… I think my mind is just rounding 1% to “close enough to zero as makes no difference.”
Maybe, but I find it easier to fall for the opposite bias, the one known as “There’s still a chance, right?”
(nods) Sadly, my succeptability to rounding very small probabilities up when I want them to be true is not inversely correlated with my succeptability to rounding very small probabilities down when I want to ignore them. Ain’t motivated cognition grand?
I do find that I can subvert both of these failure modes by switching scales, though. That is, if I start thinking in “permil” rather than percent, all of a sudden a 1% chance (that is, a 10 permil chance) stops seeming quite so negligible.
Maybe, but I find it easier to fall for the opposite bias, the one known as “There’s still a chance, right?”
(nods) Sadly, my succeptability to rounding very small probabilities up when I want them to be true is not inversely correlated with my succeptability to rounding very small probabilities down when I want to ignore them. Ain’t motivated cognition grand?
I do find that I can subvert both of these failure modes by switching scales, though. That is, if I start thinking in “permil” rather than percent, all of a sudden a 1% chance (that is, a 10 permil chance) stops seeming quite so negligible.
Huh, that’s a pretty neat hack!