wedrifid comments on Advancing Certainty - Less Wrong

34 Post author: komponisto 18 January 2010 09:51AM

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Comment author: wedrifid 19 January 2010 02:19:54AM *  4 points [-]

The fundamental question of rationality is: why do you believe what you believe? As a rationalist, you can't just pull probabilities out of your rear end. And now here's the kicker: that includes the probability of your model being wrong. The latter must, paradoxically but necessarily, be part of your model itself. If you're uncertain, there has to be a reason you're uncertain; if you expect to change your mind later, you should go ahead and change your mind now.

You're just telling people to pull different probabilities out of their rear end. Framing the other guy's model with 'rear endeness' doesn't make your model any less so. Your model must include information about the part of the universe that is komponisto and more generally about human psychology. Your model appears to make poor predictions about the likelyhood that human beliefs are well founded and so, were it convenient, I would bet against such predictions.

It may be complicated and my model is certainly not detailed but nor is it especially vaguer than it should be given the information I have available.

Comment author: Unknowns 23 August 2010 01:13:08PM -1 points [-]

Not only does komponisto's model make poor predictions; he in fact wants it to do this. That's why he brings up the image of a computer calculating your posteriors, so that you can say the probability of such and such is 10^-50, even though even komponisto knows that you are not and cannot be calibrated in asserting this probability.