ciphergoth comments on Open Thread: February 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong

10 Post author: CronoDAS 16 February 2010 08:29AM

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Comment author: ciphergoth 23 February 2010 07:59:55PM 3 points [-]

One thing that I got from the Sequences is that you can't just not assign a probability to an event - I think of this as a core insight of Bayesian rationality. I seem to remember an article in the Sequences about this where Eliezer describes a conversation in which he is challenged to assign a probability to the number of leaves on a particular tree, or the surname of the person walking past the window. But I can't find this article now - can anyone point me to it? Thanks!

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 23 February 2010 08:14:39PM *  4 points [-]
Comment author: ciphergoth 23 February 2010 09:43:02PM 1 point [-]

That's exactly it - thanks!

Comment author: Wei_Dai 23 February 2010 08:59:10PM 0 points [-]

This may be related to the recent post Study: Making decisions makes you tired. It seems plausible that we don't assign probabilities to events until we have to, in order to make a decision, and that's why making decisions is tiring.