katydee comments on The Importance of Self-Doubt - Less Wrong

23 Post author: multifoliaterose 19 August 2010 10:47PM

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

Comments (726)

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

Comment author: katydee 20 August 2010 07:43:32PM -1 points [-]

I don't think that analogy holds up.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 20 August 2010 07:59:37PM 2 points [-]

I wasn't making an analogy. I am surprised by that interpretation. I was providing a counterexample to the claim that it is absurd to prohibit accurate beliefs. One of my raffle-players has an accurate belief, but that player's belief is nonetheless prohibited by the norms of rationality.

Comment deleted 20 August 2010 08:04:14PM *  [-]
Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 20 August 2010 08:18:23PM *  2 points [-]

That's not true for any reasonable definition of "belief," least of all a Bayesian one. If all the raffle participants believed "I am likely to win," or "I am certain to win," then they are all wrong and they will all remain wrong after one of them wins. If all the raffle participants believed "I have a one in a billion chance to win," then they are all correct and they will all remain correct.

???

Of course. But no English speaker would utter the phrase "I will win this raffle" as a gloss for "I have a one in a billion chance to win".

I seem to have posed my scenario in a confusing way. To be more explicit: Each of my hypothetical players would assert "I will win this raffle" with the intention of accurately representing his or her beliefs about the world. That doesn't imply literal 100% certainty under standard English usage. The amount of certainty implied is vague, but there's no way it's anywhere close to the rational amount of certainty. That is why the players' beliefs are prohibited by the norms of rationality, even though one of them is making a true assertion when he or she says "I will win this raffle".

ETA: Cata deleted his/her comment. I'm leaving my reply here because its clarification of the original scenario might still be necessary.

Comment author: cata 20 August 2010 08:37:51PM 0 points [-]

Yeah, I deleted it because I wasn't doing a good job of distinguishing between "rational" and "correct", so my criticism was muddled.