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Originally Posted by plaaynde
Numbers can be a means of finding the ballpark of the strength of belief, I figure.
They can be, but they are often terrible ways to actually understand what's happening. If someone is giving me a subjective probability estimate, I can more or less expect that they will be off by 1-2 orders of magnitude. (Edit: Technically, I'm thinking about odds estimates.)
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"I'm certain but not at all times" could be 70%. "I don't really believe, but don't want to go to hell if God exists" could be 0.1%. And "I'm not stupid enough to completely have absolutely exactly zero possibility expectation, but for practical reasons and a bit beyond anyway" could be E-13%.
Numbers give a false sense of clarity in situations like these. What you're saying "could be" E-13%. But in reality it could be something closer to 0.01% and you're off by 11 orders of magnitude. Mathematically, this is a huge deal. But in terms of intuition, not so much. But then what do you *actually* mean by giving that particular number?