In the singularity year question, I interpreted that to mean “50% that a singularity occurs before YYYY, 50% that either it occurs later or it never occurs at all; leave blank if you think it’s less than 50% that it ever occurs”, even though, taken literally, the first part of the question suggests “50% that the singularity occurs before YYYY, given that it ever occurs”. Given that my probability that no singularity will ever occur is non-negligible, these interpretations would result in very different answers.
Yes. My estimate was based on “Keep adding years until the cumulative probability is 50%”, which did eventually terminate, but at a much higher year than if I were to assume it is to occur.
Given what the presence of just one person who believes the probability that a singularity will ever occur is about 50.01% and who applies this heuristic I hope the results of the survey aren’t limited to giving us the mean!
If you look at the results of the last survey, that’s exactly what happened, and the mean was far higher than the median (which was reported along with the standard deviation). I agree, it would have been a big improvement to specify which sense was meant.
Also, answering year such that P( | ) would be the best way to get a distribution of answers on when it is expected. So that’s what I did. If you interpret the question the other way, then anyone with a 30-49.9999% chance of no singularity, has to put a date that is quite far from where most of their probability mass for when it occurs lies.
Suppose I believe that there is a .03% probability of a singularity for each of the next 1000 years, and then decaying by 1⁄2 every thousand years after that. That puts my total singularlty probability in the 52% range, with about half of my probability mass concentrated in the next 1000 years. But to answer this question literally, the date I’d have to give would be around 7000AD, even though I would think it was about as likely to happen by 3011AD as after 3011AD.
In the singularity year question, I interpreted that to mean “50% that a singularity occurs before YYYY, 50% that either it occurs later or it never occurs at all; leave blank if you think it’s less than 50% that it ever occurs”, even though, taken literally, the first part of the question suggests “50% that the singularity occurs before YYYY, given that it ever occurs”. Given that my probability that no singularity will ever occur is non-negligible, these interpretations would result in very different answers.
Yes. My estimate was based on “Keep adding years until the cumulative probability is 50%”, which did eventually terminate, but at a much higher year than if I were to assume it is to occur.
Given what the presence of just one person who believes the probability that a singularity will ever occur is about 50.01% and who applies this heuristic I hope the results of the survey aren’t limited to giving us the mean!
If you look at the results of the last survey, that’s exactly what happened, and the mean was far higher than the median (which was reported along with the standard deviation). I agree, it would have been a big improvement to specify which sense was meant.
Also, answering year such that P( | ) would be the best way to get a distribution of answers on when it is expected. So that’s what I did. If you interpret the question the other way, then anyone with a 30-49.9999% chance of no singularity, has to put a date that is quite far from where most of their probability mass for when it occurs lies.
Suppose I believe that there is a .03% probability of a singularity for each of the next 1000 years, and then decaying by 1⁄2 every thousand years after that. That puts my total singularlty probability in the 52% range, with about half of my probability mass concentrated in the next 1000 years. But to answer this question literally, the date I’d have to give would be around 7000AD, even though I would think it was about as likely to happen by 3011AD as after 3011AD.
This giving of numbers that that fall short of a full probability distribution really can be misleading at times, can’t it?!