brazil84 comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong

97 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2010 11:23PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (1329)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: cupholder 24 March 2010 12:32:03AM -1 points [-]

No, I don't have a strict algorithm I follow in situations like this. What I actually do is probably more like this:

  • do some initial reading to get an idea of the basic plausibility of the hypothesis based on my background knowledge
  • let the hypothesis bounce around my mind for a while
  • try to spell out to myself the resulting gut feeling for the hypothesis' probability
  • check that rough estimate for any gaping flaws
  • if that rough estimate is really low, reject the hypothesis as Too Unlikely To Debate for the time being (remember that 'super careful' warning I made a few posts up? This is where it applies)
  • if the rough estimate is instead very high, accept the hypothesis as Too Likely To Debate for the time being
  • if the probability estimate is more middling, and the hypothesis' truthiness is important to me, gather more data and try to hone my hunch for the hypothesis' probability