lessdazed comments on Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment - Less Wrong

26 Post author: badger 28 May 2011 05:15AM

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Comment author: lessdazed 28 May 2011 08:44:29AM *  3 points [-]

Interesting post.

Counterintuitively, experts are best suited to deviate from SPRs grounded in theory because they have a better understanding of when the SPR will apply.

Experts in SPR, experts in the field in question, or only experts in both?

One such conceptual argument is given by Gerd Gigerenzer. He begins by noting that from a frequentist point of view, it doesn’t make sense to assign probabilities to one-time events, as subjects are often asked to do. Hence subjects’ answers can’t be judged as errors since they are valid under a possible interpretation.

Gigerenzer has a 50% chance of being right about this. Either he is, or he isn't. That's logic.

Comment author: badger 28 May 2011 03:44:08PM 3 points [-]

Experts in SPR, experts in the field in question, or only experts in both?

Experts in the field in question. But even then, selective defection is probably a bad idea unless there is an obvious countervailing factor, like a prisoner recently became a quadripelegic and hence is very unlikely to commit another violent crime no matter what an SPR says. If experts are inclined to tweak the results based on theoretical knowledge, that knowledge should probably be incorporated directly into the model.

I added a citation on this point.

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