In hindsight I should’ve specified a time limit. Someone pointed out to me that if something taxonomically included in “human” continued living for a very long time, then that thing could “consider” an indefinite number of ideas. Maybe I should’ve said “that anyone considers up until the year 3k” or something.
I don’t think that solves the problem though. There are a lot of people, and many of them believe very unlikely models. Any model we (lesswrong-ish) people spend time discussing is going to be vastly more likely than a randomly selected human-thought-about model.
I realise this is getting close to reference class tennis, sorry.
I had little hope of solving much in this domain! But a base rate that is way off is still useful to me for some discussions. What you’re pointing to might offer some way to eliminate a lot of irrelevant n, or gouge probability away from them. So with respect to discussions within smart circles, maybe the base rate ends up being much higher than 1/5million. Maybe it’s more like 1⁄10,000, or even higher. I’m not a stickler, I’d take 1⁄1,000, if it lets certain individuals in these circles realize they have updated upward on a specific metaphysical idea way more strongly than they could reasonably. That it’s an obvious overconfidence to have updated all the way to 50% chance on a specific one that happens to be popular in smart circles at the time.
In hindsight I should’ve specified a time limit. Someone pointed out to me that if something taxonomically included in “human” continued living for a very long time, then that thing could “consider” an indefinite number of ideas. Maybe I should’ve said “that anyone considers up until the year 3k” or something.
I don’t think that solves the problem though. There are a lot of people, and many of them believe very unlikely models. Any model we (lesswrong-ish) people spend time discussing is going to be vastly more likely than a randomly selected human-thought-about model. I realise this is getting close to reference class tennis, sorry.
I had little hope of solving much in this domain! But a base rate that is way off is still useful to me for some discussions. What you’re pointing to might offer some way to eliminate a lot of irrelevant n, or gouge probability away from them. So with respect to discussions within smart circles, maybe the base rate ends up being much higher than 1/5million. Maybe it’s more like 1⁄10,000, or even higher. I’m not a stickler, I’d take 1⁄1,000, if it lets certain individuals in these circles realize they have updated upward on a specific metaphysical idea way more strongly than they could reasonably. That it’s an obvious overconfidence to have updated all the way to 50% chance on a specific one that happens to be popular in smart circles at the time.
I think that’s how I’d use this as well.