Here is an example run I did where I tuned down the alpha to 1.5 and tuned the lognormal standard deviation down to 1.5:
Here, the top actual threat really is 7 orders of magnitude more dangerous than the bottom evaluated threat. However, the top apparent threat is overestimated by a factor of 10,000 or so.
If I do a bunch of runs with these settings, the median overestimate is over 100x:
So even if I trust your vibes here (which do not seem to be based on anything), the curse can still hit quite badly. I personally believe that the spread of numbers that people make up is going to be higher than the spread of actual threats: when we look at actual surveys you get a highest-lowest estimate spread of 11 orders of magnitude for some questions.
One thing that might be confusing you is that the power law model assumes that only threats above a certain threshold of actual danger are considered (this is the xmin factor). Obviously nuclear risk is a much greater risk than stubbing your toe, but it’s not going to show up the model.
Here is an example run I did where I tuned down the alpha to 1.5 and tuned the lognormal standard deviation down to 1.5:
Here, the top actual threat really is 7 orders of magnitude more dangerous than the bottom evaluated threat. However, the top apparent threat is overestimated by a factor of 10,000 or so.
If I do a bunch of runs with these settings, the median overestimate is over 100x:
So even if I trust your vibes here (which do not seem to be based on anything), the curse can still hit quite badly. I personally believe that the spread of numbers that people make up is going to be higher than the spread of actual threats: when we look at actual surveys you get a highest-lowest estimate spread of 11 orders of magnitude for some questions.
One thing that might be confusing you is that the power law model assumes that only threats above a certain threshold of actual danger are considered (this is the xmin factor). Obviously nuclear risk is a much greater risk than stubbing your toe, but it’s not going to show up the model.