10 ms·

Pinker gave many reasons, but mostly from high above, using general statistical patterns to make predictions on a very specific issue. Rees's argument was shor

Pinker gave many reasons, but mostly from high above, using general statistical patterns to make predictions on a very specific issue. Rees's argument was short. It was one plausible scenario. I often find the latter more compelling than the former.

claudeganon 6y ago
Pinker’s use of statistics has been highly spurious, which is why he’s frequently drawn ire from N.N. Taleb and others: https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pinker.pdf https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pinker.pdf
- 1-more 6y ago
  I can only conclude from reading him that his job is to tell me that my eyes are playing tricks on me and everything is going well.
pmoriarty 6y ago
I find both their arguments completely unpersuasive because neither provides an argument for or against the "bioerror" happening by this specific date? Why or why not by the end of 2020? Why not by the end of 2021 or 2025 or 2050? They're both mute on this point.
- clankyclanker 6y ago
  Because then the likelihood of the event occurring increases so significantly that it becomes uninteresting to wager about.
- runamok 6y ago
  That seems the whole premise of the site: "Long Bets". You can't just say "some day" as given a long enough time horizon many improbable things will occur.
  - pmoriarty 6y ago
    "You can't just say "some day"" Yeah, I get that. But why or why not should it happen in 4 years? Why not 6 or 8 or 3? These numbers seem just pulled out of a hat, and their arguments would make as much or as little sense with a different date.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      They are pulled out of a hat. That is the point. A bet needs to have a defined end date to be paid. The date itself is arbitrary.
      - pmoriarty 6y ago
        Let me try a different approach to explaining what I mean. Let's say you're trying to argue why we'll run out of helium in, say, 10 years. You could say: we have 10X quantity of helium, we use 1X per year, therefore we'll run out in 10 years. Or you could say: we use a lot of helium. We're bound to run out of helium sometime, therefore we'll run out in 10 years. The arguments presented in this bet are of the second sort. They do not say anything about why what they're betting on should happen in 10 years or in any other timeframe. Sure, the bet is for the end of 2020, but in order to be persuasive you actually have to make an argument for why what you predict does or does not happen in that timeframe. No such arguments were even attempted here. That's what's so frustrating.
        powersnail 6y ago
        No such argument is possible at the time they made the bet. If such an argument is possible, there wouldn't be a bet, because the other side would have been persuaded (or very foolish). Simply put, they guessed; it's a gut feeling.
        pmoriarty 6y ago
        A gut feeling is not an argument. And whether an argument is persuasive depends on what the argument is and on the people evaluating it. Arguments with using hard data and actual reasons for picking a certain time frame are not automatically persuasive. Take a look at the Peak Oil arguments that were made. They had pretty hard numbers and reasons for their predictions, but plenty of people were not persuaded. Another example is Ray Kurzweil's predictions about the singularity, which also had their reasons, statistics, etc, but plenty of people disputed them and made counterarguments. But least you could tell why they believed their predictions would happen within that timeframe. No such evaluation is possible with the "bioerror" predictions, however, since they didn't make arguments for why it should happen by the end of 2020, but instead just expressed their "gut feeling", as you point out. That's absolutely worthless.
- ivalm 6y ago
  You can think of it in terms of rates. For example, if you think some event has a constant chance of happening of 5%, you should bet for durations >13 years (for p>0.5). If your counter-party thinks the rate is instead 3%, then the duration is >22 years (for p>0.5). This means that two people with these two beliefs have a zone of possible agreement for making a bet in the time period of 13 to 22 years, where exactly it lands depends on the negotiation.
- omgJustTest 6y ago
  Gotta have a time to call "I won, you lost.". 2020 is arbitrary... but if you had a bioterror attack before the bet... would you guess that another is not going to happen in another 10 years?
staplung 6y ago
That's funny in a way because it's literally Pinker's first argument against: "Cognitive biases inflate the subjective odds of disaster: If a scenario is imaginable, it seems probable."
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  That's so vague you can apply it to anything. I believe the academic term is 'pseudo-profound bullshit' (really, not snark).
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    It's not bullshit, and it really does apply to anything. Observe people who had only theoretical awareness of some issue (e.g. kidnappings, bad treatment of animals) who shrug off statistics, but if they read a detailed story about a particular example, they're suddenly super upset about it. The bias itself is probably a cousin of availability heuristic - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic.
    - powersnail 6y ago
      Specifically in the context of this bet, it's semi-bullshit, because we have no number of how inflated the estimate of danger is. You can't really say "Rees must be having a cognitive bias, and his estimate of the bioterror/bioerror has to be grossly overstated". Rees is not a population. the Law of large doesn't apply. He might have been too optimistic. Even if he is overly pessimistic, maybe the inflation of risk isn't that significant. Or it is significant, but the risk is so great, that even after subtracting the inflation, it is still dangerous. The point is, applying a statistical heuristic without supplying the actual parameters is meaningless. The heuristic itself is not bullshit. The application in this case certainly is.
  - gwd 6y ago
    Taking the bet in isolation, it would only make economic sense to make any bet at even odds if the probability of the event occurring is > 50%. If Martin Rees was honestly asserting that the probability of a "bioterror / bioerror" event in that 4-year window was >50%, I think he was clearly wrong, and falling victim to the "availability bias" that Pinker describes. Now, this may be a situation where the sides think they're talking about different things: Pinker may be arguing that the probability is <50%, while Rees may be arguing that the probability, while low, is non-negligible. In which case, in my opinion, they'd both be right: But Rees' bet (again in isolation as a bet) isn't rational (since the expected payoff is negative), while Pinker's is.
jamesrcole 6y ago
> I often find the latter more compelling than the former. We might find one compelling, but what matters is which is more accurate (or maybe neither of them are).
- powersnail 6y ago
  Neither is that compelling; otherwise there wouldn't be a bet. Rees basically said, I bet this is going to happen before 2020 ends, because my gut said so. Pinker multiplied a bunch of statistical principals without a number. I really don't understand how to reach a conclusion based on his line of reasoning. At least the gut feeling of an expert is somewhat a reasonable point.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
cjohansson 6y ago
I agree. Often intelligent academic people can justify almost anything using their toolset of theories from different fields when they intuitively feel something is right. That intuitive feel is what really matters most anyway

claudeganon 6y ago

Pinker’s use of statistics has been highly spurious, which is why he’s frequently drawn ire from N.N. Taleb and others: https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pinker.pdf https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pinker.pdf

1-more 6y ago
I can only conclude from reading him that his job is to tell me that my eyes are playing tricks on me and everything is going well.

pmoriarty 6y ago

I find both their arguments completely unpersuasive because neither provides an argument for or against the "bioerror" happening by this specific date? Why or why not by the end of 2020? Why not by the end of 2021 or 2025 or 2050? They're both mute on this point.

clankyclanker 6y ago
Because then the likelihood of the event occurring increases so significantly that it becomes uninteresting to wager about.
runamok 6y ago
That seems the whole premise of the site: "Long Bets". You can't just say "some day" as given a long enough time horizon many improbable things will occur.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  "You can't just say "some day"" Yeah, I get that. But why or why not should it happen in 4 years? Why not 6 or 8 or 3? These numbers seem just pulled out of a hat, and their arguments would make as much or as little sense with a different date.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    They are pulled out of a hat. That is the point. A bet needs to have a defined end date to be paid. The date itself is arbitrary.
    - pmoriarty 6y ago
      Let me try a different approach to explaining what I mean. Let's say you're trying to argue why we'll run out of helium in, say, 10 years. You could say: we have 10X quantity of helium, we use 1X per year, therefore we'll run out in 10 years. Or you could say: we use a lot of helium. We're bound to run out of helium sometime, therefore we'll run out in 10 years. The arguments presented in this bet are of the second sort. They do not say anything about why what they're betting on should happen in 10 years or in any other timeframe. Sure, the bet is for the end of 2020, but in order to be persuasive you actually have to make an argument for why what you predict does or does not happen in that timeframe. No such arguments were even attempted here. That's what's so frustrating.
      - powersnail 6y ago
        No such argument is possible at the time they made the bet. If such an argument is possible, there wouldn't be a bet, because the other side would have been persuaded (or very foolish). Simply put, they guessed; it's a gut feeling.
        pmoriarty 6y ago
        A gut feeling is not an argument. And whether an argument is persuasive depends on what the argument is and on the people evaluating it. Arguments with using hard data and actual reasons for picking a certain time frame are not automatically persuasive. Take a look at the Peak Oil arguments that were made. They had pretty hard numbers and reasons for their predictions, but plenty of people were not persuaded. Another example is Ray Kurzweil's predictions about the singularity, which also had their reasons, statistics, etc, but plenty of people disputed them and made counterarguments. But least you could tell why they believed their predictions would happen within that timeframe. No such evaluation is possible with the "bioerror" predictions, however, since they didn't make arguments for why it should happen by the end of 2020, but instead just expressed their "gut feeling", as you point out. That's absolutely worthless.
ivalm 6y ago
You can think of it in terms of rates. For example, if you think some event has a constant chance of happening of 5%, you should bet for durations >13 years (for p>0.5). If your counter-party thinks the rate is instead 3%, then the duration is >22 years (for p>0.5). This means that two people with these two beliefs have a zone of possible agreement for making a bet in the time period of 13 to 22 years, where exactly it lands depends on the negotiation.
omgJustTest 6y ago
Gotta have a time to call "I won, you lost.". 2020 is arbitrary... but if you had a bioterror attack before the bet... would you guess that another is not going to happen in another 10 years?

staplung 6y ago

That's funny in a way because it's literally Pinker's first argument against: "Cognitive biases inflate the subjective odds of disaster: If a scenario is imaginable, it seems probable."

anigbrowl 6y ago
That's so vague you can apply it to anything. I believe the academic term is 'pseudo-profound bullshit' (really, not snark).
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  It's not bullshit, and it really does apply to anything. Observe people who had only theoretical awareness of some issue (e.g. kidnappings, bad treatment of animals) who shrug off statistics, but if they read a detailed story about a particular example, they're suddenly super upset about it. The bias itself is probably a cousin of availability heuristic - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic.
  - powersnail 6y ago
    Specifically in the context of this bet, it's semi-bullshit, because we have no number of how inflated the estimate of danger is. You can't really say "Rees must be having a cognitive bias, and his estimate of the bioterror/bioerror has to be grossly overstated". Rees is not a population. the Law of large doesn't apply. He might have been too optimistic. Even if he is overly pessimistic, maybe the inflation of risk isn't that significant. Or it is significant, but the risk is so great, that even after subtracting the inflation, it is still dangerous. The point is, applying a statistical heuristic without supplying the actual parameters is meaningless. The heuristic itself is not bullshit. The application in this case certainly is.
- gwd 6y ago
  Taking the bet in isolation, it would only make economic sense to make any bet at even odds if the probability of the event occurring is > 50%. If Martin Rees was honestly asserting that the probability of a "bioterror / bioerror" event in that 4-year window was >50%, I think he was clearly wrong, and falling victim to the "availability bias" that Pinker describes. Now, this may be a situation where the sides think they're talking about different things: Pinker may be arguing that the probability is <50%, while Rees may be arguing that the probability, while low, is non-negligible. In which case, in my opinion, they'd both be right: But Rees' bet (again in isolation as a bet) isn't rational (since the expected payoff is negative), while Pinker's is.

jamesrcole 6y ago

> I often find the latter more compelling than the former. We might find one compelling, but what matters is which is more accurate (or maybe neither of them are).

powersnail 6y ago
Neither is that compelling; otherwise there wouldn't be a bet. Rees basically said, I bet this is going to happen before 2020 ends, because my gut said so. Pinker multiplied a bunch of statistical principals without a number. I really don't understand how to reach a conclusion based on his line of reasoning. At least the gut feeling of an expert is somewhat a reasonable point.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

cjohansson 6y ago

I agree. Often intelligent academic people can justify almost anything using their toolset of theories from different fields when they intuitively feel something is right. That intuitive feel is what really matters most anyway