MTGandP comments on Firewalling the Optimal from the Rational - Less Wrong

86 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 October 2012 08:01AM

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Comment author: lukeprog 07 October 2012 07:07:30PM 20 points [-]

calling a fact unlikely is an insult to your prior model, not the fact itself

Not necessarily. Your model could have been quite reasonable, and yet something weird happened in the world. Sometimes, people win the lottery twice on the same day.

Comment author: MTGandP 01 November 2012 08:49:50PM 1 point [-]

I think the point is that if something happens, it has probability 1 of having happened, so it doesn't make sense to call it "unlikely." A perfect model could have predicted it with probability 1. If you failed to predict it, it's because your model was imperfect.

I think, however, that plenty of reasonable models of group interactions given our current knowledge would have failed to predict the rise of Objectivism.