Roko comments on Beauty quips, "I'd shut up and multiply!" - Less Wrong

6 Post author: neq1 07 May 2010 02:34PM

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Comment author: neq1 07 May 2010 06:57:03PM *  0 points [-]

This has nothing to do with semantics. If smart people are saying "2+2=5" and I point out it's 4, would you say "what matters is why you want to know what 2+2 is"?

The question here is very well defined. There is only one right answer. The fact that even very smart people come up with the wrong answer has all kinds of implications about the type of errors we might make on a regular basis (and lead to bad theories, decisions, etc).

Comment deleted 08 May 2010 12:51:31PM [-]
Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 08 May 2010 03:29:18PM 2 points [-]

So the difficult question here is which probability space to set up, not how to compute conditional probabilities given that probability space.

(Posted as an antidote to misinterpretation of your comment I committed a moment before.)