= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Benquo comments on The Most Important Thing You Learned - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (83)
That sort of makes sense if what you mean is "whatever we humans think about A has no effect on the truth or falsehood of P in a Platonic sense" but surely showing that A is invalid ought to change how likely you think that P is true?
Similarly, if P is actually true, a random argument that concludes with "P is true" is more likely to be valid than a random argument that concludes with "P is false". So showing P is true ought to make you think that A is more or less likely to be valid depending on its conclusion.
(Given that this comment was voted up to 3 and nobody gave a counterargument, I wonder if I'm missing something obvious.)
3 is still a small number. If it were 10+ then you should worry. I'm confused by this too.
The nearest correct idea I can think of to what Jim actually said, is that if you have a proposition P with an associated credence based on the available evidence, then finding an additional but invalid argument A shouldn't affect your credence in P. The related error is assuming that if you argue with someone and are able to demolish all their arguments, that this means that you are correct, and giving too little weight to the possibility that they are a bad arguer with a true opinion. Jim, is that close to what you meant?
EDIT: Whoops, didn't see Jim's response. But it looks like I guessed right. I've also made the related error in the past, and this quote from Black Belt Bayesian was helpful in improving my truth-finding ability: