Maya Forstater

... there's nothing wrong with taking an average over a heterogeneous population, nor can I believe you literary have no prior concerning the prevalence of bad practice.

Nah its just the wrong question. Eg a mining Co can have legitimate zero profits in a year, but might still be be overstating costs (... which will have impact on taxes at some point down the road).

That's just complicating the ways in which things can work. The end result is N observation of reported losses. What % genuine. You're only being asked to choose one of 4 buckets.

Imagine an omniscient God produced the answer. Your options are 1 claim God couldn't, in which case I expect to see you never use the word profit again other than to argue it's an empty concept, or 2 say you can't guess, in which case I expect to see you never raise an eyebrow ..

I could make a guess, but absent specific and detailed data it would be no more than that. My guess would be that any company reporting more than 5 consecutive years of losses should be investigated further.

The point of eliciting guesses is 1. To aid understanding of what lies between disagreements and 2. To provide benchmarks so to people know if evidence emerges that contradicts their priors.

OK Paddy I’m going to try to demonstrate why I don’t think this question is all that meaningful (or at least why if you ever have an audience with an omniscient god it would be a waste to ask her this one…) (1/)

Lets look at Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia for example (Playing with @Open_Oil ‘s model http://openoil.net/oyu-tolgoi-model-and-narrative-report/ … ) (2/)