taw comments on Contrarianism and reference class forecasting - Less Wrong

26 Post author: taw 25 November 2009 07:41PM

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Comment author: taw 26 November 2009 04:23:31PM -2 points [-]

Not really, induction problems philosophers talk about are pure theory, and totally irrelevant to daily life. Everybody knows blue/green are correct categories, while grue/bleen are not.

Figuring out proper reference class on the other hand, is a serious problem of applied rationality.

Comment author: Toby_Ord 26 November 2009 05:20:57PM *  6 points [-]

Everybody knows blue/green are correct categories, while grue/bleen are not.

Philosophers invented grue/bleen in order to be obviously incorrect categories, yet difficult to formally separate from the intuitively correct ones. There are of course less obvious cases, but the elucidation of the problem required them to come up with a particularly clear example.

Comment author: dclayh 26 November 2009 06:39:46PM 2 points [-]

I don't know about "bleen", but "grue" is perfectly sensible as the category of "things that may eat you if you venture around Zork without a light".