Another example: If there were no studies about the safety of high energy physics experiments then I might assign a 20% chance of a powerful particle accelerator destroying the universe based on some convincing arguments put forth on a blog by someone who never studied high energy physics. We know that such an estimate would be wrong by many orders of magnitude.
That’s the way probabilities work. You assign 50 50 to the coinflip before you see the results. If you take 5 somewhat convincing arguments that there might be a problem here, and one turns out to point at an actual problem, 20% is a good assignment.
That’s the way probabilities work. You assign 50 50 to the coinflip before you see the results. If you take 5 somewhat convincing arguments that there might be a problem here, and one turns out to point at an actual problem, 20% is a good assignment.