Toby_Ord comments on BHTV: Eliezer Yudkowsky & Razib Khan - Less Wrong

12 Post author: MichaelGR 06 February 2010 02:27PM

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Comment author: Toby_Ord 07 February 2010 11:20:07AM 2 points [-]

I didn't watch the video, but I don't see how that could be true. Occam's razor is about complexity, while the conjunction fallacy is about logical strength.

Sure 'P & Q' is more complex than 'P', but 'P' is simpler than '(P or ~Q)' despite it being stronger in the same way (P is equivalent to (P or ~Q) & (P or Q)).

(Another way to see this is that violating Occam's razor does not make things fallacies).

Comment author: timtyler 07 February 2010 12:16:36PM *  5 points [-]

The actual quote is:

"...which of course violates the conjunction rule of probability theory - also known as Occam's razor - which says that a more complicated event cannot be more probable than an a strictly simpler event that includes the more complicated one."

41 minutes in.