Vladimir_Nesov comments on Bayesian Flame - Less Wrong

37 Post author: cousin_it 26 July 2009 04:49PM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 26 July 2009 08:46:26PM *  0 points [-]

Giving "probably" of actual outcome for the coin flip as ~1 looks like a type error, although it's clear what you are saying. It's more like P(coin is heads|coin is heads), tautologically 1, not really a probability.

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 26 July 2009 09:30:28PM 0 points [-]

Edited to clarify.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 26 July 2009 10:12:00PM *  0 points [-]

As a property of the actual coin and flip, the probability of heads is 0 or 1 (modulo some nonzero but utterly negligible quantum uncertainty)

This mixes together two different kinds of probability, confusing the situation. There is nothing fuzzy about the events defining the possible outcomes, the fact that there is also indexical uncertainty imposed on your mind while it observes the outcome is from a different problem.

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 26 July 2009 10:24:31PM *  0 points [-]

Yeah, it just felt like too much work to add "...randomly sampling from future Everett branches according to the Born probabilities" or the like.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 26 July 2009 10:29:41PM 1 point [-]

My point is that most of the time decision-theoretic problems are best handled in a deterministic world.