This may be one reason why people are reluctant to assign numbers to beliefs in the first place. People equate numbers with certainty and authority, whereas a probability is just a way of saying how uncertain you are about something.
When giving a number for a subjective probability, I often feel like it should be a two-dimensional quantity: probability and authority. The “authority” figure would be an estimate of “if you disagree with me now but we manage to come to an agreement in the next 5 minutes, what are the chances of me having to update my beliefs versus you?”
This may be one reason why people are reluctant to assign numbers to beliefs in the first place. People equate numbers with certainty and authority, whereas a probability is just a way of saying how uncertain you are about something.
When giving a number for a subjective probability, I often feel like it should be a two-dimensional quantity: probability and authority. The “authority” figure would be an estimate of “if you disagree with me now but we manage to come to an agreement in the next 5 minutes, what are the chances of me having to update my beliefs versus you?”