---
id: 2026-04-07T07:21:00-0400
title: 2026-04-07 07:21:00
tags:
  - status/draft
daily: "[[2026-04-07]]"
date-created: 2026-04-07T07:21:00-04:00
---
# 2026-04-07 07:21:00

> [!quote] [[hubbard_2025_project-management#Conflating Uncertainty with Knowing Nothing]]
> Some objections to providing probability estimates
> seem to be based on the presumption
> that if they don't know something exactly, they know nothing.
> For example, a person might state something like,
> "I cannot estimate a 90% CI for that because I have no idea what that could be."
> They respond as if someone were still asking for some unreasonable precision
> as opposed to whatever range represents their uncertainty,
> however wide that range may be.

I would not be surprised to hear of an estimator responding this way
even after Hubbard's calibration.
Hubbard repeatedly conflates estimates of uncertain events
with personal estimates of trivia questions with certain answers.
These are functionally identical,
but _feel_ very different.
Hubbard could do better to address this bias.

If you don't know the answer offhand,
imagine it has been lost to time.
