Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Complexity of Value ≠ Complexity of Outcome - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Wei_Dai 30 January 2010 02:50AM

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Comment author: JamesAndrix 31 January 2010 12:24:49AM 25 points [-]

Disagreeing positions don't add up just because they share a feature. On the contrary, If people offer lots of different contradictory reasons for a conclusion (even if each individual has consistent beliefs) it is a sign that they are rationalizing their position.

If 2/3's of experts support proposition G , 1/3 because of reason A while rejecting B, and 1/3 because of reason B while rejecting A, and the remaining 1/3 reject A and B; then the majority Reject A, and the majority Reject B. G should not be treated as a reasonable majority view.

This should be clear if A is the koran and B is the bible.

If we're going to add up expert views, we need to add up what experts consider important about a question, not features of their conclusions.

You shouldn't add up two experts if they would consider each other's arguments irrational. That's ignoring their expertise.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 31 January 2010 03:16:05AM 5 points [-]

I know it might seem difficult to expand this into a top-level post, but if you just want to post it verbatim, I'd say go for it.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 31 January 2010 10:45:08AM 3 points [-]

Yes James, I'd also appreciate that. Maybe we should encourage more short top-level posts and comment upgrades to posts. I think that would be great if we could develop a good procedure.