3 ms·

I recall the original context was that telling a patient to not worry because the chance of success is high isn't actually helpful, because the objective argume

I recall the original context was that telling a patient to not worry because the chance of success is high isn't actually helpful, because the objective argument doesn't take into account the patient's personal perspective. I've since extrapolated that to meaning that objective measures cannot always tell or respect the whole story, because personal perspectives can bowdlerize everything down to life or death or a 50% chance. To put it another way: Telling someone they have a negligible chance of being in an aviation accident is worthless comfort if they end up in one.

mannykannot 3y ago
> Telling someone they have a negligible chance of being in an aviation accident is worthless comfort if they end up in one. It's significant comfort in all those flights where no crashes occur, and for most of the time up to and during those that do end in crashes. Anyone who really believes they are about to embark on an activity having a 0.5 probability of killing them should put their affairs in order, but then, by the same reasoning, there's a 0.5 probability of dying while doing that! I believe the fallacy here is using an uninformative uniform prior when a much better, empirically-verified one is available.
kergonath 3y ago
> To put it another way: Telling someone they have a negligible chance of being in an aviation accident is worthless comfort if they end up in one. Sure. It’s also callous and insensitive, which is why we don’t tend to do that. But saying to the vast majority who are never going to experience a plane crash (a number larger than the number of victims by a few orders of magnitude) that it’s a coin toss is at least not very smart.
staticman2 3y ago
>because the objective argument doesn't take into account the patient's personal perspective. Suppose a friend is afraid of crossing the street. Would it be more helpful from a personal perspective POV to tell your friend the odds of being hit by a car, or to make up the fact that you are just as likely to die today crossing that street as not dying? Because the latter strikes me as unhelpful from either an objective perspective or a personal perspective.
spywaregorilla 3y ago
The purpose of probability is not to give you good feelings

mannykannot 3y ago

> Telling someone they have a negligible chance of being in an aviation accident is worthless comfort if they end up in one. It's significant comfort in all those flights where no crashes occur, and for most of the time up to and during those that do end in crashes. Anyone who really believes they are about to embark on an activity having a 0.5 probability of killing them should put their affairs in order, but then, by the same reasoning, there's a 0.5 probability of dying while doing that! I believe the fallacy here is using an uninformative uniform prior when a much better, empirically-verified one is available.

kergonath 3y ago

> To put it another way: Telling someone they have a negligible chance of being in an aviation accident is worthless comfort if they end up in one. Sure. It’s also callous and insensitive, which is why we don’t tend to do that. But saying to the vast majority who are never going to experience a plane crash (a number larger than the number of victims by a few orders of magnitude) that it’s a coin toss is at least not very smart.

staticman2 3y ago

>because the objective argument doesn't take into account the patient's personal perspective. Suppose a friend is afraid of crossing the street. Would it be more helpful from a personal perspective POV to tell your friend the odds of being hit by a car, or to make up the fact that you are just as likely to die today crossing that street as not dying? Because the latter strikes me as unhelpful from either an objective perspective or a personal perspective.

spywaregorilla 3y ago

The purpose of probability is not to give you good feelings