Wei_Dai comments on Metaphilosophical Mysteries - Less Wrong

35 Post author: Wei_Dai 27 July 2010 12:55AM

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

Article Navigation

Comments (255)
Tags: metaphilosophy fai philosophy metaethics

Comments (255)

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

Comment author: Liron 27 July 2010 06:56:37AM *  2 points [-]

For example, a Bayesian expected utility maximizer programmed with a TM-based universal prior would not be able to realize that the prior is wrong.

What does it mean to "realize that a prior is wrong"? The mechanics of belief change in a Bayesian agent are fixed by the prior itself.

Nor would it be able to see that Bayesian updating is the wrong thing to do in some situations.

Bayesian updating is always the right thing to do. The only question is how to approximate a proper Bayesian update using efficient data structures and algorithms.

. . . it may be that there is a bunch of low-hanging fruit hiding just around the corner.

I would stay in the fruit tree metaphor and say they might be "hanging right over our heads".

Comment author: Wei_Dai 28 July 2010 12:32:55AM *  0 points [-]

. . . it may be that there is a bunch of low-hanging fruit hiding just around the corner.

I would stay in the fruit tree metaphor and say they might be "hanging right over our heads".

Gee, that was obviously supposed to be a non-mixed metaphor about urban foraging. Yeah that's it. :)

Seriously, I thought about sticking with the fruit tree metaphor, but "hanging right over our heads" makes the problem sound too easy, so I decided to favor accuracy over literary elegance.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit