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

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

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Comment author: Houshalter 06 September 2010 03:36:22AM *  0 points [-]

I'm not sure I follow, why leave certain observations out of your judgement to "use evidence efficiently"? Do you mean to use your resources efficiently, like time and brain power? In that case, you can just define it as using resources as efficiently as possible. You need evidence to gain knowledge, you need knowledge to base theories, and you need theories to decide how to most effectively spend your resources, which can be spent on anything including finding more evidence in the first place.

Comment author: FAWS 06 September 2010 03:59:11AM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure I follow, why leave certain observations out of your judgement to "use evidence efficiently"?

My point was that it doesn't make sense. Even when trying to use evidence efficiently you should use all evidence (barring the considerations from Frugality and working from finite data, which are only relevant due to certain biases)