'Stats beat experience every time (almost)'

Robert and Jamie pay tribute to Dolly Parton - and Jamie plugs his video on her which can be found here - and then discuss how our intuitions about probability can be seriously misleading - leading to disastrous decisions. Robert explains why decision-makers must understand numerical probability. Robert claims that 'stats beat experience every time (almost)'! If we can estimate probability based on evidence, we should always do that. If we can't work out the probability confidently, then trying to do so tells us something important about our ignorance.

After this episode was recorded, it was widely reported that an AI insider estimated the probability of AI killing all humans within 10 years was 10 per cent! So it is being claimed that there is a 1 in 10 chance that human life will be obliterated by AI in the next 10 years. And Geoffrey Hinton (often acclaimed as the godfather of AI) said that that was not an unreasonable figure.  But when asked about what scenarios could this involve, he struggled. He should have said something like 'We cannot estimate a numerical probability for this outcome but we should act on the possibility that it could happen.' So, while we should always try to work out numerical probabilities, if there is no sound basis for doing so we should express likelihoods in non-numeric terms.