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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 imagin

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.
tompccs 6y ago
"Cognitive biases inflate the subjective odds of disaster: If a scenario is imaginable, it seems probable." Let's take a minute to remember that our brains are shaped, by millions of years of evolution, to model existential threats and act accordingly. I would say that what we deem "imaginable" is a pretty good proxy to what is "probable", especially in the long run. There's also a dishonest sleight of hand here - when determining a course of action, it's not the probability alone you look at, but the probability multiplied by the expected harm. The probability of getting in a car accident is low, but the expected harm is high enough that the hassle of wearing a seatbelt each time you go for a drive is still worth it. If he were being consistent, Pinker would say: "why are you putting on a seatbelt? Just because you can imagine a car accident, doesn't mean it will happen today". The purpose of the 'long bet' exercise isn't really about the money - it's about our ability to reason about the future. So talking about these things as abstract probabilities as if they are the outcomes of sporting events, not the lives of a million people, is dishonest bordering on morally repugnant.
- taffer 6y ago
  > Let's take a minute to remember that our brains are shaped, by millions of years of evolution, to model existential threats and act accordingly. I would say that what we deem "imaginable" is a pretty good proxy to what is "probable", especially in the long run. It is not a good proxy at all. The environment in which we lived for millions of years does not correspond well to our modern civilization. Being killed by a member of another tribe was a likely event for most of human and animal history. Today, being killed by a toaster is many orders of magnitude more likely than being killed by a terrorist. Yet many people fear terrorists, while no one fears toasters.
  - tompccs 6y ago
    The number of people killed in a year by toasters never deviates more than a couple of standard deviations from the mean. The number of people killed by terrorists in history could be exceeded in a single event. Likewise, at the beginning of the pandemic nobody had been killed by COVID-19 - were you making your toaster argument then too?
  - 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.

tompccs 6y ago

"Cognitive biases inflate the subjective odds of disaster: If a scenario is imaginable, it seems probable." Let's take a minute to remember that our brains are shaped, by millions of years of evolution, to model existential threats and act accordingly. I would say that what we deem "imaginable" is a pretty good proxy to what is "probable", especially in the long run. There's also a dishonest sleight of hand here - when determining a course of action, it's not the probability alone you look at, but the probability multiplied by the expected harm. The probability of getting in a car accident is low, but the expected harm is high enough that the hassle of wearing a seatbelt each time you go for a drive is still worth it. If he were being consistent, Pinker would say: "why are you putting on a seatbelt? Just because you can imagine a car accident, doesn't mean it will happen today". The purpose of the 'long bet' exercise isn't really about the money - it's about our ability to reason about the future. So talking about these things as abstract probabilities as if they are the outcomes of sporting events, not the lives of a million people, is dishonest bordering on morally repugnant.

taffer 6y ago
> Let's take a minute to remember that our brains are shaped, by millions of years of evolution, to model existential threats and act accordingly. I would say that what we deem "imaginable" is a pretty good proxy to what is "probable", especially in the long run. It is not a good proxy at all. The environment in which we lived for millions of years does not correspond well to our modern civilization. Being killed by a member of another tribe was a likely event for most of human and animal history. Today, being killed by a toaster is many orders of magnitude more likely than being killed by a terrorist. Yet many people fear terrorists, while no one fears toasters.
- tompccs 6y ago
  The number of people killed in a year by toasters never deviates more than a couple of standard deviations from the mean. The number of people killed by terrorists in history could be exceeded in a single event. Likewise, at the beginning of the pandemic nobody had been killed by COVID-19 - were you making your toaster argument then too?
- 6y ago