It’s very useful to have a mental ability to distinguish between 0.01, 0.001 and 0.0001 when it comes to thinking about XRisk events. I don’t think that it’s a good practice to call all of those events unlikely and avoiding to make semantic distinctions between them.
But how do you arrive at them? Intuition doesn’t deal with 0.01 and 0.00001. Intuition deals with vague notions of likely and unlikely, which also change depends on what you ate for lunch and the phase of the moon. IOW, your intuition is useless to me unless I can confirm it myself. (But then it’s not intuition anymore.)
But how do you arrive at them? Intuition doesn’t deal with 0.01 and 0.00001. Intuition deals with vague notions of likely and unlikely, which also change depends on what you ate for lunch and the phase of the moon.
I think there are plenty of cases where I can give you a intuitive answer that won’t change from 0.01 to 0.00001 depending on what I ate for lunch.
The chance that I die in the next year is higher than 0.00001 but lower than 0.01.
If you don’t have an intuition that allows you to do so, I think it’s because you don’t have enough exposure to people making distinctions between 0.01 and 0.00001.
If there’s a 0.01 chance that something happens tomorrow, then if everything stays the same you’d expect that thing to happen about three or four times this year, whereas if it’s 0.00001 you’d be quite surprised if it ever happens (EDIT: during your lifetime, assuming no cryonics/antiagathics/uploads). (Of course with stuff like x-risk intuition will be much less reliable.)
But how do you arrive at them? Intuition doesn’t deal with 0.01 and 0.00001. Intuition deals with vague notions of likely and unlikely, which also change depends on what you ate for lunch and the phase of the moon. IOW, your intuition is useless to me unless I can confirm it myself. (But then it’s not intuition anymore.)
I think there are plenty of cases where I can give you a intuitive answer that won’t change from 0.01 to 0.00001 depending on what I ate for lunch.
The chance that I die in the next year is higher than 0.00001 but lower than 0.01.
If you don’t have an intuition that allows you to do so, I think it’s because you don’t have enough exposure to people making distinctions between 0.01 and 0.00001.
If there’s a 0.01 chance that something happens tomorrow, then if everything stays the same you’d expect that thing to happen about three or four times this year, whereas if it’s 0.00001 you’d be quite surprised if it ever happens (EDIT: during your lifetime, assuming no cryonics/antiagathics/uploads). (Of course with stuff like x-risk intuition will be much less reliable.)