Unknowns comments on A Proof of Occam's Razor - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Unknowns 10 August 2010 02:20PM

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Comment author: Unknowns 12 August 2010 10:33:36AM 1 point [-]

My point is that if someone has a higher greater for the more complex hypothesis which turns out to be correct, you cannot object to his prior, saying "How did you know that you should use a higher prior," since people do not justify their priors. Otherwise they wouldn't be priors.

Comment author: JamesAndrix 12 August 2010 08:14:57PM -1 points [-]

A major use (if not the whole point,) of occam's razor is to have a rational basis for priors.

If people don't have to justify their priors, then why have a process for generating them at all?

If I create an encoding with 'God' as a low complexity explanation, would you say I am being rational?

But the point of my question above was that you find out that the more complex hypothesis is correct when you get evidence for it. Juggling your priors is not the way to do it. (in fact it probably invites accidentally counting evidence twice.