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Perplexed comments on Less Wrong: Open Thread, September 2010 - Less Wrong
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Comments (610)
Hmmm. It appears that in that (Venus, Mars) case, the agents should be exchanging questions as well as answers. They are both concerned regarding catastrophe, but confused regarding planets. So, if they tell each other what confuses them, they will efficiently communicate the important information.
In some ways, and contrary to Jaynes, I think that pure Bayesianism is flawed in that it fails to attach value to information. Certainly, agents with limited communication channel capacity should not waste bandwidth exchanging valueless information.
That comment leaves me wondering what "pure Bayesianism" is.
I don't think Bayesianism is a recipe for action in the first place - so how can "pure Bayesianism" be telling agents how they should be spending their time?
By "pure Bayesianism", I meant the attitude expressed in Chapter 13 of Jaynes, near the end in the section entitled "Comments" and particularly the subsection at the very end entitled "Another dimension?". A pure "Jaynes Bayesian" seeks the truth, not because it is useful, but rather because it is truth.
By contrast, we might consider a "de Finetti Bayesian" who seeks the truth so as not to lose bets to Dutch bookies, or a "Wald Bayesian" who seeks truth to avoid loss of utility. The Wald Bayesian clearly is looking for a recipe for action, and the de Finetti Bayesian seeks at least a recipe for gambling.
A truth seeker! Truth seeking is certainly pretty bizarre and unbiological. Agents can normally be expected to concentrate on making babies - not on seeking holy grails.
Hi! As brief feedback, I was trying to find out what "pure Bayesianism" was being used to mean - so this didn't help too much.