What do you mean by "overconfident"?
The word "overconfident" seems overloaded. Here are some things I think that people sometimes mean when they say someone is overconfident:
- They gave a binary probability that is too far from 50% (I believe this is the original one)
- They overestimated a binary probability (e.g. they said 20% when it should be 1%)
- Their estimate is arrogant (e.g. they say there's a 40% chance their startup fails when it should be 95%), or maybe they give an arrogant vibe
- They seem too unwilling to change their mind upon arguments (maybe their credal resilience is too high)
- They gave a probability distribution that seems wrong in some way (e.g. "50% AGI by 2030 is so overconfident, I think it should be 10%")
- This one is pernicious in that any probability distribution gives very low percentages for some range, so being specific here seems important.
- Their binary estimate or probability distribution seems too different from some sort of base rate, reference class, or expert(s) that they should defer to.
How much does this overloading matter? I'm not sure, but one worry is that it allows people to score cheap rhetorical points by claiming someone else is overconfident when in practice they might mean something like "your probability distribution is wrong in some way". Beware of accusing someone of overconfidence without being more specific about what you mean.
[x-posted to LW shortform]