The reason that the villagers didn’t trust the boy that he didn’t have a track record. One reason we don’t trust people who are loudly proclaiming certain kinds of doom is that they don’t have a track record of accurately predicting things (e.g. Heaven’s Gate), and that’s an inherently important aspect of the phenomenon this post is describing. If the child had accurately predicted wolves in the past, real world villagers would have paid attention to a 15% warning.
The post is suggesting that certain kinds of risks have low probability, and the predictors don’t have a track record of success because it’s impossible, but that they have other lines of evidence that can be used to justify their probability estimates. In the case of “nuclear war that hasn’t happened despite the scares” the evidence is events like the Cuban missile crisis or Petrov Day. But in the parable, it isn’t established that the child has good arguments to justify 5% or 15% wolf appearance rates.
The reason that the villagers didn’t trust the boy that he didn’t have a track record. One reason we don’t trust people who are loudly proclaiming certain kinds of doom is that they don’t have a track record of accurately predicting things (e.g. Heaven’s Gate), and that’s an inherently important aspect of the phenomenon this post is describing. If the child had accurately predicted wolves in the past, real world villagers would have paid attention to a 15% warning.
The post is suggesting that certain kinds of risks have low probability, and the predictors don’t have a track record of success because it’s impossible, but that they have other lines of evidence that can be used to justify their probability estimates. In the case of “nuclear war that hasn’t happened despite the scares” the evidence is events like the Cuban missile crisis or Petrov Day. But in the parable, it isn’t established that the child has good arguments to justify 5% or 15% wolf appearance rates.