Tyrrell_McAllister comments on How not to move the goalposts - Less Wrong

4 Post author: HopeFox 12 June 2011 03:45PM

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

Comments (71)

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

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 12 June 2011 10:04:15PM *  1 point [-]

Maybe. It depends on the distributions over programming ability that the test and color, respectively, provide. [ETA1: I should have written, "the test and the conjunction of test and color, respectively...". The point is that, conditioned on test results, color could be independent of ability.] [ETA2: Though, if your "further conclusions" was meant to include things beyond what the test tests for, but which correlate with color, then you're definitely right.]

The test's being colorblind doesn't mean that its results don't correlate with color in the population of subjects. It means that, were you to fix a test subject and vary its color while holding everything else constant, its test results wouldn't correlate with the color change.