Tell us a story. A tall tale for King Solamona, a yarn for the folk of Bensalem, a little nugget of wisdom, finely folded into a parable for the pages.
The game is simple:
- Choose a bias, a fallacy, some common error of thought.
- Write a short, hopefully entertaining narrative. Use the narrative to strengthen the reader against the errors you chose.
- Post your story in reply to this post.
- Give the authors positive and constructive feedback. Use rot13 if it seems appropriate.
- Post all discussion about this post in the designated post discussion thread, not under this top-level post.
This isn't a thread for developing new ideas. If you have a novel concept to explore, you should consider making a top-level post on LessWrong instead. This is for sharpening our wits against the mental perils we probably already agree exist. For practicing good thinking, for recognizing bad thinking, for fun! For sanity's sake, tell us a story.
This one comes from the "Dungeons and Discourse" system I'm gradually building and figures heavily as a location for one of the major campaigns
At the northern edge of the world, far and far from the comfortable lights of human habitation, beyond the Gulf of Inferential Distances and upon the shores of the steel-grey Frequen Sea, perched on a pillar of weathered stone there stands the Rational Bayesian Priory. There the Bayesian monks toil in their arcane researches, guided by the absolute leader of their sect, the Rational Bayesian Prior.
Few travelers ever come to the Priory, and this bothers the monks not at all, for they have a strange custom. When the guards spot a trader or missionary taking the long and tortuous road up the cliffs of Frequen Sea to the Priory, the monks speculate endlessly on what news he might bear of the outer world. When he arrives, they wine and dine him, getting as complete a report on the happenings in the far-off southern countries as possible.
And then, to the shock of the new arrival, as often as not their leader the Prior throws himself off the cliffs into the ocean. For it is longstanding tradition that if any mere monk should guess the traveler's news when the Prior can not, that monk becomes Prior, and the old Prior must take his own life in shame. Thus the inscription scrawled in an ancient tongue over the gates to the Priory: Priorem Mutamus Ex Novis Testimonium - "We Change Our Priors In Response To New Evidence".
But in these latter days, fewer and fewer the travelers who brave the cliffs, and fewer and fewer the southern folk who dare to approach the Priory at all. For a legend has arisen - whence no one knows - that the apocalypse is at hand, and that it is the Bayesians who will bring it. A legend that their arcane researches, delving too deep into forbidden mysteries, have awoken the Chaos God from his otherworldly slumber, and that he has possessed the Prior of the Rational Bayesian Priory.
And the legends say that no traveler shall catch the Prior possessed by the Chaos God unaware, and that he shall rule the Priory for a span of many years, consolidating his power and his hidden knowledge until he is without fear. And then he shall rain death and dark fire upon the world, burning its cities to rubble and its dreams to ashes, until all returns to the primaeval chaos from which it came.
And they will know him as the Prior of Maximum Entropy.
But priors never change, only posteriors. But you're quite right not to base a story on that. Ew.