Giving something 60-40 odds and being wrong is not itself a mistake.

Added to korrents 1 Feb 2023 · How quotes work · Something wrong? Tell us

Where this collides

• In tension with

  A writer should keep a public list of the things they got significantly wrong, so that readers can judge their credibility.

  Alexander’s Mistakes page says up front that it excludes failed predictions, because it is not wrong to give 60-40 odds on a false thing. He then lists the fluvoxamine call anyway, saying it seems worth acknowledging. The rule and the entry pull against each other, and where the line falls is the interesting question for anyone keeping such a list.

Related korrents

Our reading — they may agree, disagree or merely touch the same thing. Closest first: a shared subject counts for most, then how near the wording is.

• Numbers offer a false precision: which metrics you choose to look at, and whether a five percent rise is good, are both art rather than science. JZJulie Zhuo21 Sept 2025similar wording
• A retraction can itself be wrong, and be worth retracting. SAScott Alexander22 Jun 2023similar wording
• Only 30 to 50 percent of product experiments win, because consumer behaviour is too unpredictable to be predicted from a hypothesis. ACAlbert Cheng5 Oct 2025similar wording
• Quoting a number for P(doom) is a ridiculous notion, because it implies a precision that nobody actually has. DHDemis Hassabis23 Jul 2025similar wording
• Declining many-worlds because it extrapolates past what we can observe is methodologically respectable and still a failure of nerve. SCSean Carroll22 Apr 2024similar wording

See this on the map →