Perplexed comments on Less Wrong: Open Thread, September 2010 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: matt 01 September 2010 01:40AM

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

Comments (610)

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

Comment author: Perplexed 02 September 2010 01:21:54PM 1 point [-]

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.

Comment author: timtyler 02 September 2010 07:43:33PM *  1 point [-]

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.