Most astronomers seem to put the odds of an asteroid strike at below 1 in 1000. I’d be interested to hear the person’s other 299 ideas for race-ending catastrophes, each worthy of its own category (!).
I agree with your point, but just because someone can’t enumerate 299 possibilities, does not mean they should not reserve probability space for unknown unknowns.
Put another way, in calculating these odds you must leave room for race-ending catastrophes that you didn’t even imagine.
I believe this point is important, that we succumb to multiple biases in this area, and that these biases have affected the decision-making of many rationalists.
I am preparing a Less Wrong post on this and related topics.
Maybe a human-caused asteroid strike?
Or maybe this person can think of many different extinction scenarios which are individually very improbable, but add up to a 30% chance?
Most astronomers seem to put the odds of an asteroid strike at below 1 in 1000. I’d be interested to hear the person’s other 299 ideas for race-ending catastrophes, each worthy of its own category (!).
I agree with your point, but just because someone can’t enumerate 299 possibilities, does not mean they should not reserve probability space for unknown unknowns. Put another way, in calculating these odds you must leave room for race-ending catastrophes that you didn’t even imagine. I believe this point is important, that we succumb to multiple biases in this area, and that these biases have affected the decision-making of many rationalists. I am preparing a Less Wrong post on this and related topics.
Hmmm… I think “something I can’t think of” should qualify as a category, myself.