Oscar_Cunningham comments on Evolutionary psychology as "the truth-killer" - Less Wrong

10 Post author: Benedict 23 July 2012 08:44PM

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Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 24 July 2012 10:47:44PM 0 points [-]

God is a complex hypothesis, and so should have a prior lower than 0dB.

Comment author: MrMind 25 July 2012 11:51:42AM *  0 points [-]

... if you factor in all the scientific knowledge so far accumulated and use the universal prior.
I agree with you in principle, a good Bayesian indeed should use all his prior informations and adopt a universal prior, but I think that putting God at 0dB is still beneficial in the context of the OP debate, and wouldn't change the outcome.
I strongly doubt that the OP's father would accept a starting point where the plausibility of God is already very low, while the probability of God at 1/2 is much more palatable, and usually the accepted starting point in traditional rationality.
The fact is that the OP can share an uninformative prior and then have the father make God a complex hypothesis, by presenting scientific knowledge directly in opposition with naive opinion on God existence. Then he just can rely on his preference of simple explanations to accept God non-existence.
This procedure still make sense from a Bayesian POV but produces much less friction when used within a heated debate.