Usually, people end up with such specific numbers by starting with several round numbers and multiplying. We didn’t do that in this case, though we could. Instead, I asked Joe to use a heuristic that I sometimes find helpful. Imagine being presented with the same information ten times. How many times do you think you’d come to a different conclusion if you were reasoning about it in good faith? In other words, try to run many simulations of your own sincere deliberations to assess how much variation there might be in the results. If none, then imagine going to 100 simulations. If still none, imagine going to 1000. Etc. And when Joe did that, those are the numbers that struck him as plausible.
Usually, people end up with such specific numbers by starting with several round numbers and multiplying. We didn’t do that in this case, though we could. Instead, I asked Joe to use a heuristic that I sometimes find helpful. Imagine being presented with the same information ten times. How many times do you think you’d come to a different conclusion if you were reasoning about it in good faith? In other words, try to run many simulations of your own sincere deliberations to assess how much variation there might be in the results. If none, then imagine going to 100 simulations. If still none, imagine going to 1000. Etc. And when Joe did that, those are the numbers that struck him as plausible.
Oh, that’s interesting. Did you folks come up with that methodology?
We did. I don’t know how helpful it is for others, but I find it useful.