Maybe this is a misapplication of the concept of confidence intervals — math is not my strong suit, nor is forecasting, so let me know — but what I had in mind is that I’m forecasting a 0.00% to 0.02% probability range for AGI by the end of 2034, and that if I were to make 100 predictions of a similar kind, more than 95 of them would have the “correct” probability range (whatever that ends up meaning).
But now that I’m thinking about it more and doing a cursory search, I think with a range of probabilities for a given date (e.g. 0.00% to 0.02% by end of 2034) as opposed to a range of years (e.g. 5 to 20 years) or another definite quantity, the probability itself is supposed to represent all the uncertainty and the confidence interval is redundant.
I’m forecasting a 0.00% to 0.02% probability range for AGI by the end of 2034, and that if I were to make 100 predictions of a similar kind, more than 95 of them would have the “correct” probability range
I kinda get what you’re saying but I think this is double-counting in a weird way. A 0.01% probability means that if you make 10,000 predictions of that kind, then about one of them should come true. So your 95% confidence interval sounds like something like “20 times, I make 10,000 predictions that each have a probability between 0.00% and 0.02%; and 19 out of 20 times, about one out of the 10,000 predictions comes true.”
You could reduce this to a single point probability. The math is a bit complicated but I think you’d end up with a point probability on the order of 0.001% (~10x lower than the original probability). But if I understand correctly, you aren’t actually claiming to have a 0.001% credence.
I think there are other meaningful statements you could make. You could say something like, “I’m 95% confident that if I spend 10x longer studying this question, then I would end up with a probability between 0.00% and 0.02%.”
You could reduce this to a single point probability. The math is a bit complicated but I think you’d end up with a point probability on the order of 0.001% (~10x lower than the original probability). But if I understand correctly, you aren’t actually claiming to have a 0.001% credence.
Yeah, I’m saying the probability is significantly less than 0.02% without saying exactly how much less — that’s much harder to pin down, and there are diminishing returns to exactitude here — so that means it’s a range from 0.00% to <0.02%. Or just <0.02%.
The simplest solution, and the correct/generally recommended solution, seems to be to simply express the probability, unqualified.
What do you mean by this? What is it that you’re 95% confident about?
Maybe this is a misapplication of the concept of confidence intervals — math is not my strong suit, nor is forecasting, so let me know — but what I had in mind is that I’m forecasting a 0.00% to 0.02% probability range for AGI by the end of 2034, and that if I were to make 100 predictions of a similar kind, more than 95 of them would have the “correct” probability range (whatever that ends up meaning).
But now that I’m thinking about it more and doing a cursory search, I think with a range of probabilities for a given date (e.g. 0.00% to 0.02% by end of 2034) as opposed to a range of years (e.g. 5 to 20 years) or another definite quantity, the probability itself is supposed to represent all the uncertainty and the confidence interval is redundant.
As you can tell, I’m not a forecaster.
I kinda get what you’re saying but I think this is double-counting in a weird way. A 0.01% probability means that if you make 10,000 predictions of that kind, then about one of them should come true. So your 95% confidence interval sounds like something like “20 times, I make 10,000 predictions that each have a probability between 0.00% and 0.02%; and 19 out of 20 times, about one out of the 10,000 predictions comes true.”
You could reduce this to a single point probability. The math is a bit complicated but I think you’d end up with a point probability on the order of 0.001% (~10x lower than the original probability). But if I understand correctly, you aren’t actually claiming to have a 0.001% credence.
I think there are other meaningful statements you could make. You could say something like, “I’m 95% confident that if I spend 10x longer studying this question, then I would end up with a probability between 0.00% and 0.02%.”
Yeah, I’m saying the probability is significantly less than 0.02% without saying exactly how much less — that’s much harder to pin down, and there are diminishing returns to exactitude here — so that means it’s a range from 0.00% to <0.02%. Or just <0.02%.
The simplest solution, and the correct/generally recommended solution, seems to be to simply express the probability, unqualified.