1 in 2: Probability a flip of a fair coin will be Tails 1 in 300,000: Lifetime probability of dying from lightning 1 in 10,000,000: Probability a random newborn becomes a U.S. president
Hmm, naively the anchoring bias from having many very low-probability examples would be larger than the anchoring bias from using odds vs probabilities.
Happy to make a small bet here in case FRI or others run followup studies.
I would expect the effect to persist even with minimal examples. In everyday life when, we encounter probability in terms of odds, it’s in the context of low probabilities ( like the chances of winning the lottery being 1 in a million), whereas when we encounter percentage probabilities it’s usually regarding events in the 5-95% probability range, like whether one party will win an election.
Just intuitively, saying there is a 0.1% chance of extinction feels like a “low” estimate, whereas saying there is a 1 in a thousand chance of extinction feels like a high estimate, even though they both refer to the exact same probability. I think there a subset of people who want to say “AI extinction is possible, but extremely unlikely”, and are expressing this opinion with wildly different numbers depending on whether asked in terms of odds or percentages.
Hmm, naively the anchoring bias from having many very low-probability examples would be larger than the anchoring bias from using odds vs probabilities.
Happy to make a small bet here in case FRI or others run followup studies.
I would expect the effect to persist even with minimal examples. In everyday life when, we encounter probability in terms of odds, it’s in the context of low probabilities ( like the chances of winning the lottery being 1 in a million), whereas when we encounter percentage probabilities it’s usually regarding events in the 5-95% probability range, like whether one party will win an election.
Just intuitively, saying there is a 0.1% chance of extinction feels like a “low” estimate, whereas saying there is a 1 in a thousand chance of extinction feels like a high estimate, even though they both refer to the exact same probability. I think there a subset of people who want to say “AI extinction is possible, but extremely unlikely”, and are expressing this opinion with wildly different numbers depending on whether asked in terms of odds or percentages.
Yeah this is plausible but my intuitions go the other way. Would be interested in a replication that looks like
50% Probability a flip of a fair coin will be Tails
0.0003%: Lifetime probability of dying from lightning
0.00001%: Probability a random newborn becomes a U.S. president
vs
1 in 2: Probability a flip of a fair coin will be Tails
1 in 6: Probability a fair die will land on 5
1 in 9: Probability that in a room with 10 people, 2 of them have the same birthday.
1 in 14: Probability a randomly selected adult in America self-identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender
1 in 100: lifetime risk of dying from a car accident
I would also find this experiment interesting!