this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2021
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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago

Ah your explanation clears it up. That whole conditional probability thing is in the wikipedia article, but I see now that my explanation of the haircut thing was not correct.

I guess maybe this is a better formulation:

p1 = P(not being guilty | evidence found)

vs

p2 = P(evidence found)

Prosecutor's fallacy would assert that, if p2 is small say 0.01%, then the defendent is guilty. But really the relevant probability is p1, which could be quite a bit larger than 0.01%.

Anyways let me know if you agree lol.