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If You Say Something Is “Likely,” How Likely Do People Think It Is?

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Re: If You Say Something Is “Likely,” How Likely Do People Think It Is?

#111

Post by krapp »

sp332 wrote: post #110
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of "believing" in God, near zero, the expected value if correct - huge :-) Plus wasn't it pascal who invented expected value?

And the negative side: eternal damnation in hell (which he valued at -infinity) times a very very small chance, still means it's worth putting in whatever work to be righteous. And yes he was the inventor.

Pascal's Wager assumes the only God that can possibly exist is the Judeo-Christian one, and that the Bible is correct in its description of what that God wants, and of what awaits those who fail Him.

But logically, if any one God can exist, then so might any God or set of Gods from any pantheon, including sets never even conceived of by human beings. Since the evidence of any one God over another is the same (zero, it's entirely a matter of faith,) the benefit of belief in any one God over another is also zero, since the set of all possible Gods is infinite.

Re: If You Say Something Is “Likely,” How Likely Do People Think It Is?

#112

Post by sp332 »

krapp wrote: post #111
sp332 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the negative side: eternal damnation in hell (which he valued at -infinity) times a very very small chance, still means it's worth putting in whatever work to be righteous. And yes he was the inventor.

Pascal's Wager assumes the only God that can possibly exist is the Judeo-Christian one, and that the Bible is correct in its description of what that God wants, and of what awaits those who fail Him. But logically, if any one God can exist, then so might any God or set of Gods from any pantheon, including sets never even conceived of by human beings. Since the evidence of any one God over another is the same (zero, i…

Yeah there's a real difference between a very small but still finite chance, and an infinitesimally small chance. If you're trying to multiply negative infinity by reciprocal infinity, you have to be specific about how big each infinity is. :)

Re: If You Say Something Is “Likely,” How Likely Do People Think It Is?

#113

Post by BrandoElFollito »

I work in security and I am asked all the time about the likelihood of horrible things which may happen.

I cannot, ever, give a percentage ("70% chance we will get hacked if this and that"). I either say that I do it know and nobody will, or use "probably" or "unlikely". These are wide, hand waving categories.

I do that not because I do not want to be wrong but just because I have only a vague idea, classified into "maybe" and "maybe not"

Re: If You Say Something Is “Likely,” How Likely Do People Think It Is?

#114

Post by DEADBEEFC0FFEE »

tinalumfoil wrote: post #35
roter wrote: post #27

For what it is worth, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses the following definitions[0]: virtually certain: 99-100% extremely likely: 95-100% very likely: 90-100% likely: 66-100% about as likely as not: 33-66% more likely than not: >50-100% more unlikely than likely: 0- unlikely: 0-33% very unlikely: 0-10% extremely unlikely: 0-5% exceptionally unlikely: 0-1% [0]: https://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/a…

> virtually certain: 99-100% Hopefully whoever wrote that never works in a data center, builds cars, sells insurance, gambles, works on crypto, does scientific computing, or is ever responsible for someone's life.

Well, you'd use different scales for those domains.

If you thinking about crop failure, floods, macroeconomics, population trends, etc, 99% is fine for certainty.

Do you agree?

Re: If You Say Something Is “Likely,” How Likely Do People Think It Is?

#116

Post by no_identd »

roter wrote: post #27

For what it is worth, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses the following definitions[0]: virtually certain: 99-100% extremely likely: 95-100% very likely: 90-100% likely: 66-100% about as likely as not: 33-66% more likely than not: >50-100% more unlikely than likely: 0- unlikely: 0-33% very unlikely: 0-10% extremely unlikely: 0-5% exceptionally unlikely: 0-1% [0]: https://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/a…

Why not use the Kesselman list of estimative words?

https://www.gwern.net/docs/statistics/bayes/2008-kesselman.p...

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_of_estimative_probabilit...

What I find more annoying in terms of reporting:

The fact that news reporting doesn't distinguish likelihood vs. probability (and vice versa).

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