Vaniver comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 16, chapter 85 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: FAWS 18 April 2012 02:30AM

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Comment author: Jonathan_Elmer 22 April 2012 01:44:26AM 10 points [-]

I think the reason I was reluctant to accept that Quirrell is Voldemort is that Harry is a lot smarter than me and he trusted Quirrell.

Comment author: Vaniver 22 April 2012 07:07:03AM 5 points [-]

This should cause you to update down your view of Aumann's Agreement theorem.

(I am reminded of many professional scientists tricked by charlatans when magicians were not fooled- because the scientists knew where to look for truth, and the magicians knew where to look for lies.)

Comment author: Jonathan_Elmer 27 April 2012 12:16:10AM 2 points [-]

I have updated by learning of it's existence.

Comment author: pedanterrific 22 April 2012 07:10:56AM 2 points [-]

This should cause you to update down your view of Aumann's Agreement theorem.

Could you explain what you mean by this? I'm having trouble parsing "update down your view of".

Comment author: Vaniver 22 April 2012 07:25:48AM 7 points [-]

Could you explain what you mean by this? I'm having trouble parsing "update down your view of".

Aumann's Agreement theorem is a neat true result about fictional entities. Its applicability to real entities is subjective, and based on how close you think the real entities are to the fictional entities. Increasing that distance makes AAT less relevant to how you live your life, and increasing that distance is what I mean by "update down your view of."

My feeling is that those entities are really distant, to the point where AAT should not seriously alter your beliefs. "I trusted X because Y trusted X" is a recipe for disaster if you trust Y because of different domain-specific competence, rather than their deep knowledge of X.

Comment author: pedanterrific 22 April 2012 07:57:30AM *  5 points [-]

Right, ok. I'd already thought that AAT is essentially irrelevant to actual human behavior, so I was confused what brought it up.

ETA: No idea why you were downvoted so far.

Comment author: ciphergoth 11 September 2013 10:25:38AM 1 point [-]

On fictional evidence?