I agree that log-odds are better units, I don’t agree with replacing probability, a perfectly well understandable term for everyone, with a word that seems to be unnecessarily complicated and that only diminishes the clarity of the text. I am in general overly suspicious of groups that try to hide simple ideas behind a curtain of difficult terms.
Agree with this. I think it can be hard to know what’s jargon and what’s not from inside a technical field, and there’s signalling value in talking like an insider, and counter-signalling value in being proud of your plain clear speech and avoiding all that jargon, and it’s all very difficult.… I personally like to think that I speak in the clearest terms possible, but I can never resist the temptation to load everything with double meanings and irony.
But in this case log-odds vs probability may be the point of ‘dying with dignity’; it’s perhaps easier to care about adding or subtracting a zero in the probability of non-doom that it is to care about moving it by a microsmidgen.
(there are useful reasons to talk about log odds instead of probabilities, as in the post @Morpheus links to, but it also does seem like there’s some gratuitous use of jargon going on)
Just a dumb question, why do you/Eliezer talk about the log-odds and not just probability? Is there any reason behind this word choice?
Besides this, I’m fully on board, I enjoy this framing much more than the “die with dignity”
I think it’s harder to think about 0.00000000000000000000000000000001 than about 32 units of fucked.
I agree that log-odds are better units, I don’t agree with replacing probability, a perfectly well understandable term for everyone, with a word that seems to be unnecessarily complicated and that only diminishes the clarity of the text. I am in general overly suspicious of groups that try to hide simple ideas behind a curtain of difficult terms.
Agree with this. I think it can be hard to know what’s jargon and what’s not from inside a technical field, and there’s signalling value in talking like an insider, and counter-signalling value in being proud of your plain clear speech and avoiding all that jargon, and it’s all very difficult.… I personally like to think that I speak in the clearest terms possible, but I can never resist the temptation to load everything with double meanings and irony.
But in this case log-odds vs probability may be the point of ‘dying with dignity’; it’s perhaps easier to care about adding or subtracting a zero in the probability of non-doom that it is to care about moving it by a microsmidgen.
Sometimes (especially when thinking about evidence in baysean updates) Log odds can be useful because one bit of evidence just adds 1 bit to your log odds (in Base 2). Eliezer goes into more detail here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QGkYCwyC7wTDyt3yT/0-and-1-are-not-probabilities
“log odds” : “probability”
::
“epistemic status” : “confidence level”
(there are useful reasons to talk about log odds instead of probabilities, as in the post @Morpheus links to, but it also does seem like there’s some gratuitous use of jargon going on)