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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Are You Anosognosic? - Less Wrong
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You are arguing by definition (little can be learned with way), and throwing in infinite certainty. I doubt an anosognosic believes that it's impossible for them to be paralyzed more than I believe that 2+2=4, or that there is no God. Maybe that belief isn't even that strong, the only problem with it being that it won't go away in the face of counterevidence.
I don't know if that's correct, actually.
Anosognosia seems to be a symptom of a catastrophic failure of the brain's ability to reconsider current beliefs in light of new evidence; these systems are apparently localized to the right hemisphere, which is why you won't find anosognosiacs with paralyzed right arms, only left.
If a god descended from the heavens and spoke to you, personally, declaring existence and providing myriad demonstrations of divine power, I expect you would reconsider your belief at least a little bit. Anosognosiacs routinely deny equally compelling evidence for the paralysis of their arm!
Given what you already know about the world (including the possibility of insanity and simulations), how much evidence should be necessary to convince you in that situation? A subjective year? One hundred? One thousand? More? Once you've already decided that you're insane or in a simulation with probability X, I can't see how any evidence of anything would be useful if you already assign less than probability X to that thing. It's a local minima you can't escape from as far as I can see. One reason I'm not especially anti-religion is that I think that at least some theists are in the same position: there's no evidence that is more likely to be real evidence that there is no god than it is to be evidence of testing by fallen angels, or whatever.
But maybe I've just missed the excellent discussion about this?
The ability to update on evidence is different from level of certainty. If I'm absolutely certain about something, I accept any bet on it being true. If I'm merely unable to update my belief but I'm not absolutely certain, I will only accept moderate bets, but I'll do that long after any reasonable trust in the statements should've been eliminated by the evidence.
Okay, true. I was thinking about it backwards; absolute certainty does, of course, lead to an inability to update (which is why we don't use 1 and 0 as probabilities).
Out of curiousity, which proposition do you have higher confidence in: "No being fitting the standard definitions of God exists" or "My left arm is not paralyzed"?
I don't know: these probabilities are not technically defined, so I'm unable to compute them, and too low for my intuition to compare.
For satisfying SoullessAutomaton's curiosity I think phrasing it differently would have been better: which one would you bet (say, $100) if you had to do and could only pick one? (Assuming that both questions would get truthfully answered immediately after making the bet. It's just so that you wouldn't pick one of these just because the question seems more interesting.)
This is a trivial transformation that I don't see how could change the interpretation of the question.
Is it to say, if you had to make such a bet (at a gunpoint, if you will), you'd be indifferent and might as well flip a coin to choose? If so, fair enough. If not, what's more to it? (Assuming you don't want to get killed on refusing to take the bet.)
I could as well flip a coin.
Funny, I was just reading the arguing by definition article, then clicked the red envelope and saw your reply. I looked it up because the post I just made here reminded me of it as well. However, I feel justified in this instance because anosognosia is characterized by absolute denial. As far as I can tell, this is an unusual form of brain damage because it is so black and white; 100% of anosognosics will absolutely deny their left arm is paralyzed. If they do not, it by definition (oops) is not anosognosia, just as someone with a paralyzed left arm by definition cannot move it. Consequently, I don't see the fallacy. I genuinely appreciate the criticism, though.
In any case, I avoided arguing the question, which itself is predicated on anosognosics assigning zero probability to their left arm being paralyzed. If they don't, then there is nothing to base our probability estimate on, and the question is meaningless, like asking "There are a hundred trees, one in ten trees has an apple on it, how many apples are there? (Some apples are oranges)".
Incidentally, I assign a probability of 1 to 2+2=4 and don't understand why you would not. Can you explain?
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