rwallace comments on Two probabilities - Less Wrong

1 Post author: rwallace 15 February 2010 02:18PM

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Comment author: rwallace 16 February 2010 03:25:57AM 0 points [-]

Put it this way: Of all the things that might have turned out to be controversial, I'm just surprised "we have no idea whether there is life on Mars" turned out to be the one; it still strikes me as fairly obviously reasonable. Oh well, surprises are part of the point of talking to people :-)

Comment author: Cyan 16 February 2010 04:53:35AM 0 points [-]

The problem may be that "we have no idea whether there is life on Mars" sounds a lot like "we have no evidence about the presence of life on Mars", which is simply not the case. (Of course, "we have no idea whether there is life on Mars" was operationalized as a probability assessment of 0.5, which does not imply zero evidence, so I can't be sure if my re-quotation is what you meant.)

Comment author: rwallace 16 February 2010 05:53:16AM 1 point [-]

Ah, indeed the paraphrased version would be incorrect, and wasn't what I meant; perhaps I phrased my version badly. I've added a clarification to my earlier comment, does that help?

Comment author: Cyan 16 February 2010 02:03:23PM 0 points [-]

Yup.