SilasBarta comments on Talking Snakes: A Cautionary Tale - Less Wrong

107 Post author: Yvain 13 March 2009 01:41AM

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Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 16 November 2009 08:15:40PM *  3 points [-]

This is the same kind of person who would watch that they're going above and beyond to adhere to their faith's requirements.

You should be aware that when you write

(1) "The kind of person who is an X is also a Y.",

many careful readers are going to read that as equivalent to

(2) "All people who are Xs are Ys."

Come on, this is basic Bayesian probability theory here. You should have dropped the rhetoric of "you think X implies a 100% probability of Y" a long time ago.

Indeed. No one here had said anything about 100% probabilities. If you want (1) above to be read as shorthand for

(1') "The kind of person who is an X is also a Y with probability 1 - epsilon.",

then you should reciprocate by reading (2) as shorthand for

(2') "All but a (1 - epsilon)th of people who are Xs are also Ys."

If you want to dispense with "most likely", "nearly all", etc., then you should allow others to do the same.

I certainly could have made the basis for that belief more clear, but you also should have applied the principle of charity and thought about the possibility that it wasn't just a misreading, and that there are reasons to infer someone is a "devout Muslim" other than "oh, someone told me with those exact words."

This seems a fair summary of your view: Any Muslim creationist is so likely to be a cultural traditionalist that, when Yvain reports meeting an exception in Egypt, you may confidently accuse him of lying.

And that, I maintain is a baseless inference, albeit a probabilistic one. One shouldn't throw around accusations of lying without justifying strong confidence in such an inference.

Comment author: SilasBarta 16 November 2009 08:46:54PM *  -2 points [-]

You should be aware that when you write (1) "The kind of person who is an X is also a Y.", many careful readers are going to read that as equivalent to (2) "All people who are Xs are Ys

Many careless readers, you mean? This is Less Wrong, Tyrrell. Most everyone understands that "X is certain" doesn't mean P(X) = 100%. One hundred percent probabilities (infinite odds) don't exist and can't be updated; what matters instead is whether something is certain enough, and it needn't be 100% for this to hold.

Indeed. No one here had said anything about 100% probabilities. If you want (1) above to be read as shorthand for

(1') "The kind of person who is an X is also a Y with probability 1 - epsilon.",

I do wish it be so read, and this is how people should already be reading such statements, for the reasons given above. Requiring that all "1-epsilon" be always written as "nearly all" instead of "all" is wasteless verbiage. See But there's still a chance, right?.

This seems a fair summary of your view: Any Muslim creationist is so likely to be a cultural traditionalist that, when Yvain reports meeting an exception in Egypt, you may confidently accuse him of lying.

It doesn't seem like a fair summary of my view, or even one you put much effort into. A fair summary would be "Any Muslim creationist female in a Muslim country, who meets the criteria I specifically identified, is so likely to also adhere to the norm of restricted casual conversation with unrelated males, that, when Yvain reports chatting with one in an Egypt cafe where the impropriety would be noticed, then given his past embellishment of details [see last response to Zack], I may confidently suggest that his story is not entirely accurate and more likely indicates a tale pieced together from other accounts."

Ah, man, not so straw-stuffed when you put it that way...

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 16 November 2009 10:22:30PM 3 points [-]

. . . given his past embellishment of details [see last response to Zack], I may confidently suggest that his story is not entirely accurate and more likely indicates a tale pieced together from other accounts."

None of those examples strike me as remotely in the ballpark of the mendacity of which you accused him in this thread.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 16 November 2009 09:50:42PM *  1 point [-]

I do wish it be so read, and this is how people should already be reading such statements, for the reasons given above. Requiring that all "1-epsilon" be always written as "nearly all" instead of "all" is wasteless verbiage.

Precisely my point. Why, then, did you object to my "all" when I glossed your position as "all creationist Muslims are culturally traditional."? [ETA: Object, that is, by accusing me of saying that you were making an absolute 100%-certain claim.]

[This is a separate issue from your objection that I didn't say "All Muslim creationist women in Cairo who meet the criteria that you specifically identified . . .".]

Ah, man, not so straw-stuffed when you put it that way...

All of my arguments carry over mutatis mutandis to this version of your position.

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