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Notes on probability, panic & better guesses
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File 03Panic-to-Probability Converter

Panic-to-Probability Converter

Turn a 2 a.m. fear into a number.

Name the fear, answer four questions about your prior, your sample size, and whether anything actually changed. It crosses out the catastrophe and rewrites it as a calmer reading of the evidence.

02Check the base rate

How often does the thing you're afraid of actually happen to people in your situation?

03Weigh the evidence

How much data is this fear actually based on?

04Weigh the evidence

Did something genuinely new and diagnostic happen?

05Name the belief

Before today, was this within the range you'd already expect?

The reading

Answer the four questions and the panic gets corrected into a probability — with a reading of how much you should actually update.