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Jack comments on Amanda Knox: post mortem - Less Wrong
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Did you at any point update on your fellow Less Wrong posters' estimates?
I'm not sure what you are asking, but the opinions of other posters here has not had much of an impact on my own.
Well, the judgment of people here is evidence just like anything else. Lets say I initially predicted Knox's guilt with p=0.01, Since I think my beliefs track the truth and the beliefs of other Less Wrong posters track the truth I should expect other posters to agree with my assessment if my belief is accurate. The majority of posters disagreeing with me is far more likely if I'm wrong than if I'm right. So upon learning that the vast majority of posters disagree with me I should be more uncertain about my prediction.
How uncertain I should be is a difficult question-- in many cases in that thread it was resolved by discussing evidence. Many people with initially high probabilities shifted their estimates downward after evidence they missed was pointed out to them. If you think you have evidence other Less Wrong posters don't have then it makes sense to not take their opinions seriously. Alternatively, if you think Less Wrong posters are irrational or poorly calibrated and don't expect their beliefs as a group to track the truth well then it makes sense to more or less ignore their opinion. I suppose one could also ignore the opinions of the Less Wrong posters on the ground that the opinions of random people reading about the case are swamped by the opinions of people who have studied the case for months-- and thus make very little difference. But now Knox and Sollecito have been released-- if your trust in the experts was what lead you to ignore Less Wrong you should update on the new court decision.
So why didn't you update on the opinions of Less Wrong posters?
I wonder. The opinions of members of a given community are not independent events. There's influence by high status members, and by perceived community consensus (note how in a previous post, brazil84 got downvoted just for admitting, when asked, that this consensus didn't move his own opinion much - I don't know, but to me that's ominous). So isn't there's a risk of counting the same evidence (the arguments and facts that convinced the "first movers" in forming this community consensus) multiple times?
What you say, that if others of my group disagree with me and I'm in a strong minority, then I'm probably wrong - how far does that go? The majority of humanity is probably wrong about a lot of things that we on Less Wrong are probably right about, by virtue of our greater rationality, and we don't seem to be updating in their direction, are we? Well, if brazil84 is a lawyer, then similarly, by virtue of his expertise, it seems reasonable to me that he should not easily let his opinion be influenced by that of laymen.
That might make sense if the question under discussion were a legal question (e.g. how a statute is likely to be interpreted by a court). But that isn't the case here. In fact, even if the domain that brazil84 is claiming expertise in -- determining whether people are telling the truth or not -- were one in which lawyers were more likely to have expertise (and frankly I know of no reason to believe this), the fact is that it has precious little relevance to this case. This case is not about which human statements to believe. Instead, it's about applying Occam's Razor to physical evidence.
Point taken.
It's a combination of having little respect for the opinions of anonymous internet posters as well as faith in my own ability to look at incomplete evidence concerning real world disputes and draw reasonable conclusions. As an attorney I do this every day. In fact, my livelihood depends on doing it. All day long people call me up and spin tales and I have to guess at what happened in their case based on limited evidence. I've been wrong many times over the years, both in believing people who turned out to have been BSing me as well as being skeptical of people who turned out to have been telling the truth.
Pseudonymous. There are many similarities, but having a long-standing name does have significant differences, even if the name isn't tied to one's "real-life" name.
There seems to be a certain disjoint between the second half of this paragraph and the first.
Confidence isn't really about evidence?
Keep in mind that you are yourself an anonymous internet poster dealing with other anonymous internet posters with confidence in their ability to look at incomplete evidence concerning real world disputes and draw reasonable conclusions. I would say this is a situation where consideration of the outside view is warranted.
Well to me, I'm not anonymous. But anyway, I also try to go by peoples' actual arguments. I think this is a reasonable amount of consideration.
Which is a very tenuous basis on which to put yourself in a separate reference class.
You should adjust your confidence according to the strength of others' arguments relative to what you would expect given your prior confidence value, and you should also adjust your confidence according to the fact of others' belief weighted according to your confidence in their mechanisms for establishing truth.
If I believe proposition A, and someone gives me argument X for disbelieving it, and I find argument X weak, I should adjust my confidence little if at all. But if a large population of people whose judgment I have no reason to believe is less sound than my own for cases in this class tells me that proposition A is wrong on the basis of argument X, and I'm just not getting it, I should significantly decrease my confidence, on the likelihood that I really am just not getting it.
Well let me ask you this: roughly speaking how much weight do you give to the unsupported assertion of an anonymous person on the internet versus your own conclusions of which you are reasonably confident in an area where you are reasonably confident of your skill and experience?
Depends on where the anonymous internet people are selected from. From Youtube comments? Very little. From here? Quite a lot more.
If I knew that it were something that the people here had put a lot of thought into, and that nearly everybody here thought that I was completely wrong, I would need tremendous prior certainty not to be reduced below .5.
Even if the dispute were in an area where you believed you had unusual expertise?
So, to summarize why you didn't update:
Boy was Upton Sinclair ever right.
I'm not sure that's the way to put it, but let me ask you this: How much stock do you put in the unsupported assertion of an anonymous person on the internet?
Please quote me where I made that assertion.
Well I need to be decent at a minimum. But basically yeah. I assess cases day in and day out. That's a huge advantage. I know that I'm much better than I was 15 years ago, even though I was just as smart then as I am now.
Sure, getting this kind of feedback is a good way to improve one's judgment. Do you seriously disagree?
:shrug: I agree, but employment is sadly not the only motivator for self-deception. Let me ask you this:
Do you agree that the tone of your post is a bit nasty?
To the extent that you don't think that you're more reliable than those people, you're engaging in a treatment of evidence that is simply wrong. The fact of someone's belief is evidence weighted according to the reliability of their mechanisms for establishing belief. That's the principle behind Aumann's Agreement Theorem.
I'm not sure I understand your point. My belief that I have superior judgment in this area is based on actual knowledge about myself and my experiences. "Faith" implies that there is no such basis.
I don't recall claiming or implying that I was basing my assessment on "faith," but I could be wrong. Which is why I am giving loqi a chance to back up his statement.
But not knowledge of the other commenters and their experiences, whom you seem to have lumped into the reference class of "anonymous internet commenters," which you assign a low assessment of competence.
If you want to find a lot of people with significant expertise in rendering judgment under uncertainty, I think this is a pretty good place to look.
If "have faith" is changed to "believe" everyone here should agree.
How much stock do you put in the supported assertion of an anonymous person on the internet? I think that's a more relevant question here. To what degree does a poster's anonymity detract from his argument?
Quite a lot. But I don't think that's the right question. See, the basic argument being made is that even though I have considered Mr. Anonymous' arguments and decided they were without merit, I should still be significantly less certain of my position simply because a number of these anonymous people (making basically the same weak arguments) disagree with me. Did I misunderstand the argument being made?
Yes. The point is that in "deciding [the arguments] were without merit", you didn't take sufficient account of the quality (not merely the quantity, by the way) of the people making them.
If a high-quality person says "X is true", you might be able to dismiss it if you have sufficient knowledge. But if they say "X is true because of A,B, and C", you can't dismiss X without also dismissing A, B, and C. And here the problem is with your judgement about A, B, and C, not (just) your judgement about X.
I'm pretty confident that I did. If you see a problem with the arguments I made back in the original thread, please feel free to respond (preferably there) and I'm happy to consider your point in good faith.
Yes. It's a combination of having little respect for the feelings of typically-wrong pseudonymous internet posters as well as faith in my own ability to look at incomplete justifications for sloppy reasoning and draw snarky conclusions.
Ok, and again my questions:
Please quote me where I made that assertion.
Sure, getting this kind of feedback is a good way to improve one's judgment. Do you seriously disagree?
Nobody seems to have answered this question directly, though it seems easy...
See the direct parent of the post you were replying to (which I think should have been obvious since it was presented as a summary):
Also, don't you at least see the tension between:
It seems the logical conclusion is that you've lost your job.
Ok, so you agree that in the exact post where I used the word "faith," I summarized the factual basis for confidence in my own judgment?
That would be the case if my livelihood depended on exercising perfect judgment at all times. Which fortunately it does not.
Let me ask you basically the same question I asked the other poster:
Do you agree that getting feedback about one's judgment (including being wrong from time to time) is helpful in improving one's judgment?
No, I don't particularly care to parse all that enough to agree to anything. I was just answering your question since it seemed like nobody else had bothered to. People seem to have an odd problem answering questions with obvious-seeming answers, even though they are often helpful to people. For example, the other day on aiqus someone was asking how to type the | symbol, and the answer was straightforwardly a series of directions starting from locating the "Enter" key on a US keyboard. It turned out to be very helpful to the OP, as there was a piece of lint blocking the | symbol.. I was pleasantly surprised that the OP did not merely become the subject of ridicule, as I've often seen with 'obvious' seeming questions in other contexts.
No thanks.
Suit yourself, but you will be missing the problem with loqi's statement.
Again, it's your choice. But I think that answering the question will help you to see why it's not necessarily a contradiction to (1) have one's livelihood depend on making good judgments; and (2) regularly make judgments which turn out to be wrong.
And here we have a case study on what not to do and why.
If you want to make an argument for why I should put more weight on other posters' opinions about Knox and Sollecito, I'm happy to consider it.
I'm afraid this is a lesson for others to learn by observation and not one which you can learn yourself (without changing your mind). The reasoning goes along the lines:
Note that this is both an somewhat opposing but also complimentary lesson to the one Eliezer notes.
I vaguely recall that you got pretty annoyed at me a year or so ago when I pointed out a contradiction in your reasoning. I suspect that your anger at me over that incident is informing your commentary.
But anyway, if there really are any lurkers reading this, feel free to look back at the actual arguments I made concerning Knox and draw whatever you conclusion you like. Also pay specific attention to my exchange with wedrifid.
I've had no interaction with you on this site at all, but I have read your posts on the previous Amanda Knox threads, and while I believe I have a far greater aversion than wedrifid to making statements so likely to antagonize others, I have to say I find your judgment in this case in conjunction with your position as a lawyer downright frightening.
Well what exactly frightens you? I'm not a judge.
Judges are mostly selected from among lawyers, so that would be a lot more comforting if I were confident that the selection process were a genuinely good filter for people of exceptional judgment. But I would have a lot more trust in our justice system if I thought that lawyers tended to be people who would not readily become convinced of and argue strongly for positions in the absence of good reasons for believing them true.
At least in the United States, judges are mostly selected from among prosecutors. Defense attorneys, including public defenders, aren't very well represented on the bench. General judgment aside, this a serious systemic bias of the system.
Only mostly? I had assumed it was an actual legal requirement. That's interesting. Where you come from how many judges have ever not been lawyers and how on earth do they know what they are doing?
EDIT: From the looks of it some (40) states in the US allow non-lawyers to be low level judges, usually for small towns doing straightforward cases. From what I can tell in Australia (and most comparable countries) a law qualification of some sort is required.
I see your point, but I suspect the problem is more in your own judgment than in mine. Consider that I have had the experience of being wrong on these sorts of issues -- and having to face it -- many many times.
Wedrifid is just like that. All the time.
Ok, then perhaps my suspicions are unwarranted.
I don't recall any conversations with you. (Mind you I expect I would have if I believed you then. Actually being wrong is embarrassing.)
No, from the premise "brazil84 is blatantly and obviously wrong despite paying attention to the topic" "don't do what brazil84 did" is a reasonably good inference to make. But as I noted you don't share that premise so naturally you should not be expected to believe it. This is why you were not the intended audience.
Usually, it depends.
Oh, true. For example your correction here gives somewhat less than 0 embarrassment points. Let me clarify that to "In cases where someone is attempting to criticize me regarding a substantial assertion I have made in a manner that makes the situation highly status relevant actually being wrong is embarrassing".
I'm pretty sure we had a lengthy exchange. But I suppose I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that your public claim -- in essence -- that my conclusions are insane was purely from the desire to help other posters and not in any way related to our history.
ETA: I just was looking back and I realized that I do not engage with you anymore. I had forgotten about that. Anyway, bye again.
Are you referring to the 'exchange' that starts around here and continues from there? If so... I'm not so sure bringing this to people's attention is in your best interests.
No, I was referring to the exchange in the earlier Knox thread.
For me, this is not a competition to see how many people I can win over or how many karma points I can accumulate.
If it's this you're referring to, I have to wonder how you got from there to "I suspect that your anger at me over that incident is informing your commentary". That seems like blowing it way out of proportion.
Ok, I think I found it:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1j7/the_amanda_knox_test_how_an_hour_on_the_internet/1c6t?context=9#comments
And here's an exchange between me and him which got pretty personal:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ph/youre_entitled_to_arguments_but_not_that/1njx?context=1#1njx
He's apparently deleted some of his comments, but I wouldn't have asked him to stop making things personal if he hadn't done so.
Here's one thing which he said (and later deleted, it seems):
Clearly he and I have some history here, to put it politely.
Anyway, was reading over the thread and now I remember I banned the guy.
No, that wasn't it either.