Forthcoming AER paper argues stated probabilities are disciplinable, vague words are not
soumitrashukla9 · x · 2026-09-20
"Numbers Tell, Words Sell" by Victor de Chaisemartin, Michael Thaler, and Mattie Toma is forthcoming in the AER. Sharers note it matters for the "words are better than probabilities" crowd: made-up probabilities face discipline across many events—wrong ones show poor resolution/calibration—while consistently wrong words are often vague enough to be unfalsifiable. Directly relevant to whether LLMs should express uncertainty in words.
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